


Diagnosing Stockholm syndrome

by Onefootinthegravex2



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Black Humor, Cannibalism, Chilton being Chilton, Chilton channeling Raul, Fluff, M/M, Murder, One-Sided Attraction, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-11 05:59:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2056461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onefootinthegravex2/pseuds/Onefootinthegravex2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternative universe fic in which Will Graham is swayed by pity and decides to shelter Fredrick Chilton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pity is a strange thing

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own ‘Hannibal’.

 

You never really know the moment your life changes, you can be going about your business quite contently, then suddenly the universe shifts on its axis and everything changes. 

Will Graham has had far too many of these moments in the past couple of months, more than most people have in their entire lives. 

The moment Fredrick Chilton hobbles up his porch steps reeking of blood and sweat is one of them. 

‘Can I use your shower please?’, Fredrick says, the formality of his tone contrasting with his battered appearance. The dogs run out and swarm him, licking off the blood coating his fingers in a morbid parody of welcome.

Will doesn’t have the energy to be surprised. The waking nightmare that he has lived in ever since he met Hannibal Lecter has simply morphed slightly. Besides this surprise visit is far more preferable to the consequences of Hannibal’s last ventures, which ended with Will vomiting up a human ear and Beverly Katz’s dissected corpse. 

Plus Will was never fond of Dr. Chilton anyway. 

\---

He sat at the bottom of the stairs with his cell phone in his hand listening to the water running in his shower. His finger hovers over the ‘call’ button, Jack’s number has already been dialled in. 

What stops him is the noise that accompanies the sound of water beating a taboo against tiles, Chilton is crying. Dry, choked sobs echo down the stairwell. Will doesn’t know why he feels pity for Chilton, the man had never spared him any when he’d been an inmate at the doctors ‘hospital’. Not that Will considered ‘Baltimore hospital for the criminally insane’ a hospital, it more like an enclosed holding pen full of murderers. He could still remember the harsh clap of Chilton’s ridiculous cane on the flagstones as he approached Will’s cage. 

Dr. Chilton had never given Will any cause to sympathize with him. 

Yet he still hasn’t called Jack. 

Maybe its empathy, Will thinks with a bitter smile. He knows exactly how it feels to have his life destroyed by Hannibal Lecter. To be hunted, caged, reviled. He knows how it feels to looked at as a murderer. 

He doesn’t what to do that to someone else, even if that person is pretentious, snarky Fredrick Chilton.

He doesn’t want things to go according to Hannibal’s plan, just this once. 

He gets up off the bottom step, carefully placing his phone on the small table by his front door. The screen still reads ‘Jack’, but Will knows now that he isn’t going to call the number. 

\---

 

Chilton comes downstairs half an hour later. He’s changed clothes and now looks as if he’s dressed for a fancy business trip. 

Will wonders whether Fredrick can appreciate just how truly screwed he is right now. 

‘I’m going to South America’, Fredrick announces to the room.

Will raises an eyebrow. 

Perhaps not 

‘If you know what’s good for you Dr. Chilton you’ll be making yourself comfortable’, Will replies.

Fredrick looks at him, like Will has suggested he go stay with Hannibal Lecter. 

‘You can’t be serious’, the doctor says, his voice becoming more highly strung by the second, ‘I’m getting far away from here as soon as possible’

‘Fredrick how much money do you have on you?’, Will asks, more calmly than he feels. 

‘That’s none of your concern…wait are you blackmailing me Mr. Graham?!’, Fredrick gasps, his eyes scanning the room wildly for an escape exit. 

Will sighs and runs a hand through his hair, ‘No I’m just trying to get you to understand the situation Doctor’. 

‘Do you think I’m some sort of brain dead hack?’, Chilton snaps, ‘I have corpses on my property!’

‘Exactly, so one of the first things the FBI are going to do is freeze all your accounts’, Will says slowly and carefully, ‘How are you going to board a plane when the entire state is looking for you?’.

Chilton gapes at him like a fish for a moment, then sinks down onto the couch. 

‘Oh god’, he whispers, putting his head in his hands. 

‘I haven’t call Jack or anyone else…yet’, Will continues, hoping Chilton isn’t going to start sobbing again, ‘But you have to do exactly as I say, are we clear?’

‘Do I have much choice in the matter?’, mutters Fredrick morosely. 

Will lets silence speak for itself in reply. 

\----

The next steps are surprisingly simple. Will orders Chilton into the basement with a cup of coffee and a bag of chips. Chilton tries to argue but Will silences him with his patented ‘I-get-inside-murderers-heads-for-a-living’ look which shuts the cowardly doctor up pretty damn fast. Will also confiscates Fredrick’s gun, which he notices poking out of the Doctors coat pocket. He’s amused to discover it isn’t even loaded. 

Fredrick’s eye sore of a car is more difficult to dispose of. Will can’t think of anything better to do than hide it in his barn. He silently thanks God he doesn’t have any neighbours for miles as he does this, as the bloody thing just screams ‘look at me!’ from its bright red paint down to its over-sized head-lights. 

He kicks fresh snow over the bloody marks near his porch. Then goes inside to wait for Jack’s call.

\----

Five hours later Will ushers a very frazzled looking Fredrick Chilton of his basement. Chilton is still clutching the unopened bag of chips like a lifebelt.  
‘Okay, you’re safe for now’, Will reassures the shivering man. 

The FBI thankfully had proved to be as short-sighted as usual and had overlooked the possibly that Chilton could have come to Will. Then again Will reasoned, he wouldn’t have thought Chilton would have come to him of all people either. Fredrick Chilton was thought to have escaped Baltimore via the back roads. 

There were currently no leads to his whereabouts.

Will didn’t know whether to be mildly impressed with Chilton for choosing an excellent bolt hole or just deeply skeptical of the organization he worked for.

He settled for a bit of both

Fredrick settled on the couch, looking around warily as if something was going to jump out and bite him. He looked diminished without his silver cane and gaudy suit. 

Will took a deep breath, hoping his wasn’t going to regret being swayed by pity. But really in his current fragile state, how much trouble could Fredrick Chilton be? 

\-----

 

24 hours later and Will was already on the verge of murdering Chilton. 

Fredrick Chilton seemed to embody everything that was irritating to Will. He was fussy, loud, rude and was always just there. Chilton seemed to be dealing with his near brush with death by developing a separation anxiety. Whenever Will turned around Fredrick was close by, complaining about something else he found lacking.

Will had never lived with someone else since he moved out of his childhood home, and even then his father was usually at the dockyard working or drinking in a dingy bar somewhere. He now had new respect for married couples, he could never have predicted just how irritating the presence of another human being could be. 

Especially when said other human being would not stop complaining. 

‘Don’t you ever clean the carpets?’

‘There are spider webs in my room!’

‘What is this mush?’

‘You don’t have proper cable?’

‘White bread Mr. Graham, really?’ 

‘Do the dogs have to be kept inside the house?’

Will hadn’t quite realized the events of yesterday were real until this morning, when he’d blearily stumbled into the bathroom to be met by the sight of Chilton’s naked backside. Fredrick had practically squawked and slammed the door straight in Will’s face.

That was when the horrible realization that dawned on Will. Pitying Chilton and putting him up for the night was one thing, but having him live in his house, potentially for a very long period of time was another. 

Will was already gritting his teeth and it was only day one. 

Fredrick seemed obvious to Will’s discomfort, perched on the edge of the couch as if he was frightened he could catch something from the material, he let out another loud sigh. 

‘What did I do to deserve this?’, he asks, voice filled with self-pity. 

‘Tell me about it’, mutters Will.

One of the dogs tries to jump onto to Chilton’s lap and he lets out an indignant cry, swatting it away. 

Will wonders whether he can still call Jack. 

Pushing his half-finished breakfast away from him, Will decided he’d rather arrive early at work today. Chilton was engrossed in a long moan about the state of the curtains, but when he saw Will putting on his jacket he sat bold upright. 

‘You’re not leaving me alone?’, he said eyes wide. 

‘I’ve got to go to work’, snaps Will.

Fredrick slumped down onto the couch, ‘oh of course’, he murmured dejectedly, ‘I’ll wait here then’.

Will rolled his eyes, ‘Is there anything you need me to get you while I’m out’, he says. He’s aware of Chilton’s dietary difficulties, he’d had to listen to him moan about them enough. He’d rather not be subjected to caring for a Fredrick Chilton suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea, a healthy Chilton was difficult enough. 

Fredrick seemed to perk up a little.

‘Actually I’ve already written a list’, he said smugly. As if such a thing was a massive achievement. 

Fredrick handed him a neatly folded square of paper. The list was titled ‘essentials’, in Chilton’s annoyingly perfect handwriting. Will scanned it quickly, then did a double take. 

‘Organic watermelon slices’, he says aloud, looking at Fredrick with disbelief, ‘Quinoa, avocados, coconut water…Goji berries’. 

The worse part was Fredrick was staring at him looking completely serious. He actually expected Will to buy him these things. 

‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’, Will snaps.

‘You haven’t even gotten to the toiletries section yet !’, Fredrick says. He has the audacity to seem surprised that Will is refusing his list of requests. 

‘These things are ’essentials’ to you?’, Will ran a hand through his hair, he’s stressed already and only its only 8:30am. 

‘I am on a restricted vegan diet Mr. Graham’, Chilton retorts haughtily, as if speaking to a child or a very dim adult, ‘unless you wish me to become severely malnourished…’

‘I have never heard of Goji berries and I’m not malnourished’, Will interjects, trying to keep his voice calm. One other thing he hates apart from being psychoanalysed is patronized. 

‘Do you want my professional opinion on that?’, Chilton replied in an icy tone, his eyes flicking deliberately over Will. 

Will doesn’t have to be an empath to see what Dr. Chilton makes of his scruffy clothing, dark-ringed eyes and pale skin. 

It is this damning assessment in part, which makes him take even greater pleasure in seeing the smug expression on the doctors face change to that of outrage, when he rips up the shopping list right under his nose. 

‘You know what else is vegan Dr. Chilton?’, Will says through gritted teeth, ‘Apples, oatmeal, lettuce, potatoes and rice. I hope you like them, cause that’s what you’re going to be getting under my roof!’ 

Chilton is open mouthed and spluttering at Will’s insolence. Will wonders if Chilton has schooled all of his expressions to be so ridiculous for dramatic effect.

Will continues, ‘Furthermore, I’d like to inform you right now, I am not your lacky or employee, if you really need something then I’d get it for you, but I’m not going to run around Baltimore every damn day hunting for any of this sort of stupid crap. Do you understand?’ 

Will doesn’t even wait for a reply. He turns away from infuriating creature that is Fredrick Chilton and leaves the house, to stomp through the snow to his car. 

He buckles himself in, then dry swallows two aspirin. Will can still catch a glimpse of the doctors green eyes staring daggers at him through the living room window. 

Like a prissy cat that’s been kicked for pissing on the rug, Will thinks to himself before turning on the ignition. 

Cats and dogs, Will can’t help but chuckle. It was almost too clique. Polar opposites aren’t supposed to get along. 

\--

The day predictably doesn’t get any better from then on. When he arrives at the lab Jack is still a bundle impotent anger over losing their prime suspect. 

He keeps sending Will looks as if he suspects something but has no proof. Fredrick was last seen speeding off towards Wolf trap after all. 

Will tries to keep his head down, but he can practically feel Jack breathing down his neck. 

The rest of the team are on edge because of the tension. Jimmy and Brian have both had the sharp end of Jack’s tongue for no good reason and are understandably quieter. Will finds the strained atmosphere considerably worse than the usual snarky banter, and makes an excuse to leave early. Under the false premise that he has to prepare notes to teach his afternoon lecture at the academy. 

It’s not like anyone is getting anywhere. All leads to Chilton have gone dead, his relatives are clueless to his location and no new evidence can be churned up from the scene at the house. The FBI team are forced to conclude, much to Jack’s disgust, that their prime suspect has fled the country. 

It’s guilt that drives Jack. Will can see it plainly written on his face. Miriam Lass has never stopped haunting him and still won’t until Jack exonerates himself by catching the ripper. Will wonders idly whether Jack would feel the same guilt if Will was found butchered in some bizarre fashion. 

He concludes he doesn’t want know the answer. 

\--

He uses up his stolen half-hour sitting in the dingy student coffee shop on campus, nursing black with no sugar, trying to massage away his headache by rubbing his temples. Any student that recognizes him keeps a wide berth. He was never a popular lecturer before his incarceration, ruthless in his marking and unwilling to answer inane questions. But now even the most bold student tended to shy away. Being framed as the ripper did carry some perks. 

He wonders what Chilton is doing. Probably still sulking over the loss of his Goji berries. The thought makes him chuckle. For someone who’d been disembowelled and framed for murder in the past couple of months, Chilton still managed to get so worked up over silly little things. 

Then as if his day can’t get any worse, who should waltz into the shop but Freddie Lounds. Impeccably dressed as always, her auburn curls flying around her face, she gains more than few admiring looks from the other patrons. 

Suckers, Will thinks bitterly. Sinking as low as possible in his chair, but of course Freddie has already seen him. It wouldn’t surprise him to find that’s she’s tailed him all the way from the lab. 

Freddie slides gracefully into the chair across from him, without asking. 

‘So what do you recommend off the menu Mr. Graham, I assume you‘re a regular, lecturing at academy so often?’, she says smoothly. Already fishing for information. 

‘It’s a coffee shop Miss Lound’s, they serve coffee, what else did you expect?’, mutters Will. 

Freddie just raises one slim eyebrow, and smirks at his rudeness. 

‘I guess I’ll just cut to the chase then Mr. Graham, if you’d prefer?’, she replies, she seems almost amused to have annoyed him so much by her mere presence. 

‘Will it make you leave faster?’ snaps Will.

Freddie blithely pretends she didn’t hear him, ‘I’m working on an article concerning the newest ripper suspect, I assume you remember Dr. Chilton from your time at his hospital?’

Only too well, Will thinks bitterly. 

‘I have sources that say he was driving in the direction of your house when he disappeared, is that correct?, Freddie asks. She’s watching him closely, trying to gauge any response, any flicker of emotion in Will’s eyes. 

‘Well you already know more than you should’, Will says stony faced. He remembers Fredrick on his porch, the wild fear in the other mans eyes. The dry choked sobs echoing down the stairs. He is pitying Chilton, he can’t help it. He sees the hunger in Freddie’s eyes, the same twisted curiosity when she says Fredrick’s name, that she has when she looks at Will. He knows how it feels to be fed on by vultures. 

Freddie preens a little, she considers Will comment a compliment, ‘So would you be willing to enlighten me further Mr. Graham?’ she smiles showing teeth, a predators mannerism, ‘I know you bare the Doctor little love yourself ’.

Will leans into the table, Freddie predictably follows suit lured by the possibly of a whispered secret. 

Will whispers low, ‘Freddie, if Fredrick Chilton had tied me down every night at Baltimore state, and fucked me until I was black and blue, and you were the only person I could tell. I would still never breath a word to you’. 

Freddie recoils instinctively at the crudeness of Will’s words. She brushes her hair back and stands up abruptly. Her mouth is twisted like she’s sucked on a lemon.

‘Well then Mr. Graham, if you’re going to be foul-mouthed as well as uncooperative I’ll have to make up my own assumptions’, Freddie says, ‘If you change your mind however’, she places an embossed business card on the table and gives Will one last smile which doesn’t reach her eyes. She raises her gloved hand in a wave of farewell, before sauntering out the way she came in. 

Will Graham wonders whether he’s ever going to get any peace today.

\---

It’s late by the time Will gets back to Wolf Trap, very late. The shape of house is still a comforting beacon on the horizon, despite the prospect of seeing Chilton again after their argument this morning. Will is too tired to be bothered by this point, Fredrick can rant and rave all he wants as long as he lets Will shovel some food down and crash out on his bed. 

The first sign something is wrong is the lack of light radiating out of the windows. Will likes to keep his house lit up, even late at night. It’s one of his few indulgences. The empty bleakness of the blackened windows make him shiver as he unloads the bags of groceries from the car. Perhaps Fredrick is an easily disturbed sleeper and prefers to have the lights out. But Will rejects this notion out of hand, the Fredrick Chilton he knows is jumpy, clingy and desperately in need of comfort. A dark house in the middle of nowhere is instinctively unnerving even to the most hardened individual. 

Will cannot help but think of Hannibal. Hannibal sitting in his living room surrounded by the corpses of his dogs. Hannibal precisely dismembering Frederick so there’s a meal prepared for Will by the time he gets home.

Braised Kidney, singular. 

Will can taste bile in his mouth. 

He lays down the bags on the snowy ground. Gently as not to make any noise, reaching for his gun. He can’t hear the familiar sound of his dogs from inside the house. His heartbeat is increasing with every passing second. 

The sitting room is dark and cold when he enters it. Silent. The television is turned off, as is his laptop, which is sitting on the table. 

Will can a hear scratching, it sounds like dog paws but he doesn’t let down his guard. Hannibal could probably mimic that noise on a door. Make Will let his guard down then strike out of the shadows. Will follows the noise, and finds that its coming from the basement. He presses his ear to the door and hears a faint chorus of whines to go with it. The dogs are safe at least, but he’s yet to find Chilton. 

Gently he cracks open the basement door, and Buster, his smallest and most rambunctious dog flies out, tail wagging. Will shushes him, and begins his descent down the basement stairs, trying to keep his feet from pressing on any loose floorboards. The cellar is pitch-black, but he can hear the sounds of his other dogs stirring from sleep in the dark. 

Will is on the final step, when a shape lunges at him through the darkness. Will moves to counter to attack, but his feet slip in a puddle of water Allowing his attacker to land a punch square into his face. Will’s arm goes up in the air and he fires a shot . Suddenly all his dogs are barking madly in alarm and his would-be-attacker lets out a shriek and ducks behind the staircase. 

Blinking through the blood that is now running from the gash on his brow, Will advances on the cowering figure, gun in hand. 

‘Please, please God. Don’t hurt me…Por favor, dios no me hagas dano!’, cries the figure, amidst the chaos of barks and whines. 

‘Chilton is that you?’, Will says, he is shaking himself with adrenaline and fear. 

‘Yes, oh God Will is that you?’, Fredrick replies, his voice is so full of relief its almost pathetic. He rises from the floor and before Will can stop him, he is hugging him. Clutching onto the front of Will’s shirt like it’s a lifeline.

It takes a few minutes before Will can find the energy for words, ’Fredrick’, he says quietly, ’Why are you in the basement with the dogs?’. 

Fredrick gasps wetly, ’The power went out hours ago, and it got dark…I thought something had happened, you weren’t coming back. I was alone, and then I heard noises outside…’

Will counts back from hundred inside his head slowly. 

‘Why didn’t you check the generator?’, he asks. 

‘I didn’t know where it was…’, murmurs Chilton, more to Will’s shirt than Will.

Will gently pries Chilton’s hands from his shirt, and walks over to the other side of the basement, feeling along the wall. The fuse box is just below the window. He opens the lid, and flicks a switch. 

The basement blazes with light, revealing a very messed up looking Chilton and six dogs. Chilton at the very least has the sense to look deeply embarrassed. His hair is sticking out all over the place, wearing just a black T-shirt and Will’s pyjama bottoms, he looks much younger and as vulnerable as when he turned up on Will’s doorstep. 

Will doesn’t have the heart to shout at him. Not when the man is such a wreck as it is, and besides wasn’t Will just five minutes ago patrolling his own home with a loaded weapon?

Instead he sighs and runs a hand through his hair. His face stings. For all his prissy sensibilities Chilton can throw a good punch when he wants too.

The silence between them is quickly becoming awkward. Chilton looks like a deer caught in the headlights. He’s expecting Will to shout at him or something. The dogs are doing circuits around the basement, quite obvious. Will notes with a heavy heart that the ’water’ he slipped in earlier is actually a pool of dog urine. 

At least he really, really hopes its dog urine. 

‘One of the problems of living out in the sticks, is sometimes the power can get a little temperamental’, Will says, in what he hopes is a soothing voice. 

Fredrick blinks at him sheepishly. 

‘I got some food, could you help me get it in the house?’, asks Will, trying to ignore the blood running into his left eye. He could deal with that later, the last thing he needed was for the dogs to rip apart the grocery bags that he’d left unattended in the drive. He has the sick feeling, somewhere Hannibal Lecter was probably chuckling.

‘Mr. Graham…Will…I’, Fredrick is still shaking slightly. Will makes a move to go upstairs but Chilton holds out a hand to stop him, ‘Please let me do it, it’s the least I can do’, he mutters red-faced, looking at the floor and not Will. 

Will nods, he knows better than to force the issue. He understands that Chilton needs to try to regain some of his shattered pride. Plus his cut could really do with some ice on it. Will’s also feels he really, really deserves a shot of whiskey after the events of the day. 

\---

Will watches from his couch, whiskey in one hand and bag of frozen peas in the other, grinning. Fredrick is trying to fend off the dogs who have swarmed him. The doctor is attempting to bring the grocery bags in, but hasn’t made it across the living room yet. 

‘I really thought you would have trained them not to do this’, snaps Fredrick, the haughty edge has returned to his voice. 

‘They don’t do it to me’, says Will, taking another sip of his drink. 

Fredrick swears under his breath, vainly making shooing motions with one hand. 

Will notices for the first time how unsteady the Doctor is without his cane. He’d always believed the pretentious silver rod was just for show, another addition to Chilton’s wardrobe of bad dress sense. But the older man genuinely seemed to be struggling. 

He sighs and puts down his glass. Chilton, it seems can’t even bring in shopping without help. 

Working together (like Will said, the dogs immediately dispersed as soon as their master entered the scene), they managed to get the groceries into the kitchen. Will ignores Fredrick’s sighs of disappointment as the shopping is packed away. Like Will had promised, he’d brought sensible food, there was not a watermelon slice in sight. 

Will sits down on the floor, letting one of his gentler dogs, Trudy lick at his face. The whiskey has hit his blood stream, and he has gone beyond tired. He’s not even hungry anymore, all he wants to do is sleep. But Fredrick it seems as other ideas. 

He tuts loudly and shoos Trudy away from Will

‘Mr. Graham, do you really think letting a dog lick your face in its present condition is a good idea?’, he asks incredulously. 

Will tries to raise an eyebrow, but winces.

‘Do you have a first aid kit?’, Chilton asks. 

‘Under the sink’

Will closes his eyes, he can hear Fredrick running water and clattering around in one of the kitchen cupboards. Trudy returns, looking forlorn, she licks Will’s hand not wanting to be pushed away again. Will pats her on the head gently.

‘Don’t worry girl, I think he’s a prat as well’, he says. 

Chilton makes an indignant snort, before shooing the dog again and setting down a bowl of hot water. 

‘This may sting a little Mr. Graham’, he mutters, before pressing a damp cloth to Will’s forehead. 

‘No shit’, Will retorts, wincing. 

Fredrick wisely chooses not to respond to this, and sets about cleaning the wound with surprisingly gentle hands. He finishes by applying a thick adhesive dressing. Will wonders how he’s going to explain the cut to Jack.

Bar fight?, he’d most likely have a bruise from Chilton’s ring on the side of his face as well. How many thugs at bars wore ornate rings?

Gay bar?. Will can’t help but chuckle thinking about the look on Jack’s face. 

Hannibal however would be much harder to fool, and he was supposed to be having dinner with him and Alana tomorrow night. 

Shit. 

‘I can’t see anything funny about this situation Mr. Graham’, Fredrick says, eyeing him cautiously. 

‘Back to Mr. Graham again?’, Will rolls his eyes, ‘I’ve see you naked and you’ve given me a black eye, I think we’re on first name terms by this point Fredrick’. 

Fredrick blushes and scowls, ‘Are you going to keep bringing that up!’ 

‘Do you have to keep calling me Mr. Graham?’

‘Fine’, Chilton mutters before rising off the floor. He pauses a moment, before offering a hand out to Will. 

Will waves it away before pushing himself up, he can tell its more of a polite gesture. Fredrick has enough difficulty supporting his own weight let alone someone else’s. 

‘Thanks for the clean up’, he says.

Chilton nods, ‘I’m sorry I hit you’, he murmurs to the floor. His voice is filled with genuine shame. 

‘No worries’, Will says awkwardly, he doesn’t know what to make of a bashful Fredrick Chilton. He gives what he hopes is a comforting smile, ‘It’s not the worse hit I’ve ever taken and it won’t be the last’. 

‘I shouldn’t have been so weak’, Fredrick hisses, his face is contorted with self-loathing. 

Will hesitates before reaching out and putting his hand on Chilton’s shoulder. It seems bizarre to be comforting Fredrick Chilton, but then again stranger things have happened to Will in the past year. 

‘You were afraid, fear is human. Plus anyone who can punch an FBI investigator square in the face in his own home isn’t that weak’, says Will, ‘How you learn to do that anyway?’ 

‘High school’, Chilton mutters morosely. But he is no longer scowling. 

‘Best years of your life?’, Will says with an edge of irony. 

Fredrick smirks, a glint of black humour in his eyes, ‘As I imagine yours were as well’.

Will returns his smirk, ‘You don‘t need a degree in psychology to work that out Fredrick’, he motions to the kitchen, ‘If you want to make yourself anything go ahead, I’m going to get to bed’. 

Fredrick pauses then swallows, ‘Thank you…for being understanding. I know I don’t really deserve it’, he murmurs. Looking Will in the eye in time. Will knows instinctively Chilton isn’t just talking about the punch. 

Will doesn’t know whether to be more disarmed by the apology he never thought he’d get, or the sudden realization that Fredrick Chilton has really interesting eyes. 

He settles for patting Chilton’s shoulder gingerly in response.

‘It’s fine’, he says. Will is surprised by how much he means this. The Fredrick Chilton he’d thought he’d known a week ago, would have rather swallowed his tongue than make a sincere apology. But here he was, with a look of almost bruising sincerity and shame on his face. Maybe he wasn’t such a puffed up idiot…maybe.

‘Goodnight then…Will’, says Fredrick. 

‘Goodnight Fredrick’, Will replies, rubbing at his hand bandage sheepishly. Christ, why was interacting with Chilton, so much like being an awkward teenager again?

Later when Will is in bed thinking over Chilton’s words , it occurs to him that perhaps the day wasn’t such a waste after all.


	2. None as blind as those who will not see

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Chilton continue to get on each others nerves. Will meets a member of Chilton's family and has a tense evening with Hannibal.

The next day thankfully was Saturday, giving Will time off from the academy. Luckily so far, jack hadn’t called him either. 

Will had been woken up this morning by the nagging pain of the bruise on his face. Although Fredrick had admittedly done a good job cleaning it up, the wound was still an angry red, purpling around the edges of his temple. 

Will had been poking at it, wondering what explanation he was going to give Hannibal and Alana, while brushing his teeth in the bathroom, when Fredrick had stumbled in. The other man had taken one look at Will and blushed bright red before slamming out of the room. Will was taken a back, after all it wasn’t like he was naked or anything, he’d been wearing underpants. Maybe Fredrick had just been raised in a very prudish environment, come to think of it that would explain a lot. 

When he finished up, he made sure to close the bathroom door a little louder than needed, to give his skittish guest the signal he was done, and went down stairs to feed the dogs. 

Will liked to take his dogs for a long walk on the mornings that he didn’t have work, the woods around his property had always had a calming effect on him. Everything from the sharp smell of pine needles, to the crunch of snow underfoot. 

The dogs were gathered at the foot of the stairs, tails waging in anticipation. 

‘Okay guys, first breakfast, then the woods’, Will said, giving each of his pack, a stroke or a scratch behind their ears. 

He heard footsteps upstairs on the landing and the closing of a door. Fredrick had taken his hint about the shower. He also heard a muffled swearword as the water started running and chuckled, Fredrick was still getting used to his temperamental plumbing. 

He’d seen pictures of Chilton’s house, the bathroom had been particularly sumptuous, with rows of expensive shampoos and body washes. He’d also heard it had a heated floor. 

What kind of person has a bathroom with a heated floor?, Will puzzled as he poured dog biscuits into bowls. 

The kind of man who has a wine cellar, Will shakes his head, then remembers that Hannibal probably has the same. 

The thought of Hannibal slips into his mind without warning. As much as he has tried to the block his ‘therapist’ out, Hannibal always seemed to creep back in. Maybe he never left and never would, a room inside his mind that Hannibal has outfitted as his own, his voice leaking out from under the locked door and spreading like a cancer. Will fights the childish urge to put his hands over his ears, shake his head until he can’t hear Hannibal whispering. 

He had to have dinner with the man tonight. Suddenly the morning didn’t seem so cheerful.

Will wasn’t frightened by the prospect of seeing Hannibal, he was frightened instead of the anticipation he felt. The need to see the other man, to hear his voice. Will Graham felt like one of his dogs, waiting on the porch for his master to come home. It sickens him. 

Chilton has crept downstairs by the time Will finishes laying out the dogs breakfast on the porch. Fredrick’s hair is still damp, and it looks like he’s attempted to slick it back in an imitation of his old style, it keeps getting his eyes all the same. 

‘Good morning Will’, Fredrick says snappily, as he brushes past him to get to the kitchen. 

Will rolls his eyes, looks like last night’s apologetic Chilton was a one off. 

‘Did you sleep well’, Will asks, more for something to say than anything. 

Fredrick’s head snaps round, he seems oddly flustered by the question, ’Did I keep you awake?’, he replies, scrutinising Will with narrowed eyes. Will can’t help but notice Fredrick looks anything but well rested, the man has large dark circles under his eyes. 

‘No, I’m just trying to make friendly conversation’, Will says, grabbing a bowl for himself from the cupboard. 

‘Oh I see, a new exercise for you then’, Fredrick mutters in reply, concentrating on trying to balance the packet of oatmeal so he can fill his bowl. 

Will watches him for moment, Chilton bites his lip like a kid when he’s focused on something. Its oddly endearing despite the other man’s bad temper. Maybe Dr. Chilton just wasn’t a morning person.

Or an afternoon, or evening person., Will thinks wryly 

‘I don’t see why you find me so intriguing this morning Will’, Fredrick says, catching Will staring at him. The smaller man shoves his bowl in the microwave with obvious distaste, Will hopes he’s not going to get another lecture on carcinogens. 

Fredrick seems oddly deflated this morning for all his bluster. Instead of flapping around and complaining, like he had on the first morning, he just leans on the counter shakily, staring out Will’s kitchen window. His movements are more pained, slower and jerky. Will wonders if Fredrick’s scar still pains him. 

‘I could be in South America by now’, Chilton says, wistfully, but something in the way he says it signals to Will that even Fredrick doesn’t believe his own words. He cuts a pitiful figure in the morning light, hunched over the counter, seemingly aged ten years in just one night. Will remembers how his father looked during his late few months of life, the steady decline of his emphysema had taken a rapid downward spiral. Will could still see his dad sat on the rickety chair outside his tiny house, stooped and vacant, so different from the gruff strength of the man he’d once known. 

A flash of inspiration suddenly strikes Will.

‘How tall are you Fredrick?’, he asks.

‘Are you going to insult me on my stature?’, Chilton replies flustered, in a tone that suggests others have done just that.

‘No I’ve just had an idea’, Will says. He leaves the kitchen and heads into the living room, there’s a closet in which he stores most of his junk. Quite a lot of it is either old fishing gear, or stuff he’d had to move out of his dad’s old house. Reaching deep, his hands clasp on the desired object, a wooden stick, a little worn and stained yellow on the handle from his father’s tobacco soaked hands, but still very much useable. He carries it back into the kitchen and presents it to Dr. Chilton.

Chilton looked the cane in his hands, like it had a dead rat attached to the end. 

‘What is this?’, Fredrick says, his face a mixture of bafflement and disgust. 

‘A replacement for that walking stick you had’, Will replies, ‘I noticed you were having trouble’.

Chilton blushes a little and frowns, ‘I would have you know Will, that I don’t actually need a walking aid. I merely used it to create a certain air of character to my appearance’, he says haughtily, ‘this thing you’re offering me, doesn’t look as if its been cleaned in years for one…’

Will felt like throwing the stupid thing outside to rot, why did Chilton always have to be so smug?

‘Alright’, Will mutters angrily, he reaches out to take back the stick. Annoyed with himself for even trying to help this belligerent little man. 

Fredrick stops him however, drawing the apparently ‘dirty’ cane into his arms protectively, ‘Since however, this is a gift, I will lay my usual standards aside and…humour you.’

Will just shrugs and goes back to making his breakfast. He can’t but notice out of the corner of his eye, that Fredrick is leaning into the walking stick with a look of intense relief on his face. It looked as if the pain had outweighed the pride in this instance. 

\----

By the time Will walked back into the house, covered in fine layer of snow and surrounded by a group of very happy, well-exercised dogs, Chilton had regressed to a self-pitying huddle on the couch. 

‘Could you at least get paid cable, just while I’m here?’, Fredrick pleads, the television is switched on and is playing the opening credits to some god awful sitcom. 

Will rolls his eyes, it would be little use trying to explain to Fredrick that the TV had been covered a layer of dust before his guest had arrived for a good reason. Will hated watching television, the colour and noise seemed to act like a drill on his usually exhausted brain. His empathy skills proved a double edged sword when watching actors trying to fake emotions, it was difficult to concentrate on a tense sense when it was blatant the actual thoughts on everyone’s minds were ’what’s for lunch?’ and ’did I leave the stove on?’. 

Fredrick didn’t seem to really enjoy watching the TV either, Will had the sneaking feeling it just acted as comforting background noise. Pictures of Dr. Chilton’s house had revealed an expensive HD television and sound system, there was little doubt that Fredrick had paid cable. Will had a sudden vision of Fredrick sat listlessly in front of his massive television late at night, flicking restlessly through channel after meaningless channel, trying to find something to block out the deafening silence in his massive empty house. 

Will shook his head in an attempt to scatter his thoughts. He wasn’t going to waste undue sympathy on Fredrick Chilton. The man was alone for a reason, Will’s time at Baltimore Hospital for the criminally insane has shown him that side of Fredrick’s personally only too well. 

‘Why don’t you read a book?’, asks Will, he busies himself unclipping busters lead, trying not to look at the infuriating lump of blanket on the couch. 

‘I don’t have any desire to read about fishing Will, or any pressing desire to learn to fish’, snaps Fredrick, flicking to another channel. 

‘You could clean the house a bit, since you’re always complaining about how filthy it is’, mutters Will under his breath. 

This sarcastic comment triggers an idea to form in Will’s mind, a pretty damn good idea if he’d say so himself. He quickly grabs a pad and begins scribbling down a list of things Fredrick could do that would be productive. 

Fredrick is watching him warily the entire time.  
‘There you go, that should keep your mind off the lack of cable’, Will hands Fredrick the completed list. 

Fredrick scans it briefly, then gives Will a look that could wither a lesser mans ego into dust. 

‘Am I to be your maid Will?’, Fredrick asks, every word dripping with sarcastic contempt. 

Will loses his last shred of patience. 

‘No I guess you’re just going to keep being a pain in the ass Fredrick’, he barks. Chilton flinches back into the couch, Will may have said it louder than he intended but at that moment he didn‘t give a damn.

‘Will I can assure there would nothing I would want more than to get out of your house!’, Fredrick snaps back, rising up off the couch. He’d have looked almost threatening if he wasn’t a head shorter than Will. 

‘Well then why don’t you just fucking leave then!’, shouts Will, ‘See how long you last out there!’. 

Fredrick lets out an indignant cry and grabs the blanket off the couch.

‘Don’t you think that if there was any other option than staying here, I would have left yesterday?’, Fredrick says quietly, his tone is icy, ‘I know…’, his voice breaks a little, ‘I know I have no one out there who’d take me in okay?’.

Fredrick then storms upstairs, blanket and cane in hand. 

Will is left alone, still shaking with anger. His dogs are huddled together on the far side of the room, eying their master warily. 

Will feels like running up the stairs after Chilton and throwing him out into the snow. But the cold realization dawns on him that he has already committed several crimes just by allowing Chilton to stay two nights in his house. Jack would be unlikely to be forgiving of Will hiding a prime suspect from the FBI, especially one who was supposedly responsible for the deaths of two FBI agents, and a beloved member of his forensic team.

Will was just as trapped as Chilton.

A saying his father used came to mind, ‘Well kid, it is what it is’. Will had always translated to this to mean ‘suck it up’. 

That was what he was going to have to do, for his own neck and well as Fredrick’s. Not that the spineless weasel deserved it. 

He can hear Fredrick pacing around his guest bedroom through the floorboards and a dull muttering that could be interpreted as swearing. 

Will decides to follow his fathers advice and try to salvage a little of his morning. He speaks gently to the dogs, who quickly go back to being their normal, tail-waging selves. He then settles himself down at his worktable with a couple half finished lures and cup of black coffee. Fredrick would come back down when he was hungry, and Will was willing to wait until then to try to patch things up. His nerves were still frayed and his pulse rate up, he didn’t feel like confronting a doubtlessly similarly pissed off Dr Chilton, just yet. 

He’d just managed to calm himself down and start concentrating when his cell phone started to buzz. 

I should I now I wasn’t ever going to get a weekend off when I agreed to go back into field work, thought Will jadedly, as he looked at the screen of his cell which predictably read ‘Jack’. He gives himself the luxury of one last sip of coffee before he answers the phone. 

Jack is to the point as always. 

‘We’ve got a possible lead on Chilton’, he says, and Will’s heart drops into his stomach. 

He quickly drags a list of excuses that might save his ass, all of them seem pathetic even to him. Jack is going to roast him over a pyre for this. He doesn’t even know what they’ll do to Fredrick, probably lock him in cuffs and shove them in the same cell together. 

‘Chilton’s mother has agreed to an interview’, Jack continues, unaware of Will’s frenzied mental scrambling, ’I’d like you there to read how she reacts to my questions’. 

Will cannot contain his sigh of relief. 

‘I’ll be there in an hour’, he replies, staring at his cooling cup. He can still hear the dull thud of Chilton’s footfalls through the ceiling, looks like Fredrick was going to have the house to himself. 

‘Maybe he’d be calmer when I get back tonight’, Will thinks, knowing in the back of his head that Chilton was probably going to be snarky and pissed off for days.

\-----

 

‘Mrs. Chilton, thank you for coming today. I know that this must be a very difficult time for your family’, Jack says, in his professional soothing voice that Will has noted he always adopts when trying to extract information gently. 

Mrs. Chilton raises one perfect eyebrow in response, and Will suddenly realizes where Fredrick gets his ironic face from. This meeting was going to be a lot harder than he’d thought. He’d expected a doting old woman, sobbing into a tissue, ready to tell them that Fredrick had been such a good boy and so smart. Her only son and precious to her. Will had always imagined Fredrick as being the spoiled boy in a family of girls, petted and preened simply for his existence from day one. 

The woman who sits before them however, is almost stately, immaculately dressed and groomed. Although she must be into her seventies, her jet black hair was without a trace of grey. She is unlike her son in the sense that her appearance is understated but impressive, so different to Fredrick’s gaudy suits. She must have been a beauty in her youth, Will can see the traces of it in her face despite the woman’s sour expression. Now he knows where Chilton gets that from as well. 

‘No need to thank me Mr. Crawford, I considered it a good opportunity to get an understanding of what has transpired’, she replies with a small smile that doesn’t touch her eyes. She has already learned their names from their badges, Will can sense this woman is intelligent and formidable. Her eyes flick over to him briefly, they take in his scruffy appearance and lack of official badge, she ignores him from then on and focuses on Jack. Will has been deemed unimportant to her, she doesn‘t have to waste politeness on him. 

‘Well Mrs. Chilton, we have that in common. We’re hoping to ask you some questions about the possible whereabouts of your son’, Jack sits down behind his desk, and motions to Will, ‘This is Mr. Graham, he is assisting on the case, he has also met your son on several occasions, as have I’. 

Mrs. Chilton nods slightly to Will, her eyes now hold a flicker of interest in them. 

‘How was my son, when you last saw him Mr. Graham?’, she asks. Her voice is cold. There is no hint of affection or worry in it. 

‘You speak of him in the past tense’, Will blurts back. Jack glares at him with a ‘Don‘t-piss-off-the-only-lead-we‘ve-got!’ look. But Will can’t help but voice his dislike of this woman sitting in front of him. Sitting in comfort with perfectly manicured nails, while her son was in his house, fretting and panicking over the loss of his life. 

Mrs. Chilton raises an eyebrow, ‘I cannot be sure that the present tense can still be applied to Fredrick at this moment in time’, she says coolly. 

‘Do you think your son committed these crimes?’, Jack asks, getting down to the real meat of the discussion. Will can sense Jack dislikes this frigid woman as well and wants to keep the interview short.

‘I don’t know, Fredrick has acted in ways recently I didn’t believe he could act in. But whatever he has done, he has brought all of us a lot of problems because of it’, Mrs. Chilton says, her fingers tightening on her handbag, ‘but I don’t personally think he could have had the character of this ‘ripper‘. He was far too concerned with other peoples praise to maintain a series of covert murders’ 

Will couldn’t help but snap out, ‘You seem very critical of your son’. He thinks of Fredrick shaking and clutching his shirt the night before. His bitter voice when he said he had no one else to run too. 

‘Will’, Jack says low and sharp. 

‘No Mr. Crawford, Mr. Graham speaks the truth’, Mrs. Chilton replies coolly, ‘I have always considered honesty to be a virtue’.

Will can imagine Mrs. Chilton being honest, he can imagine her not hiding her disappointed looks, her sighs, her criticisms. 

‘Mrs. Chilton, can I ask you one more question’, Jacks says, ’Do you any idea where your son could be hiding’ 

‘No, if I did know, I’d have told you long before now’, Mrs. Chilton says, her cold eyes boring into Will.

Will never thought could feel such pity for pompous git like Fredrick Chilton, but he does. At that moment he really really does. 

\---

‘Do you think she was hiding anything’, Jack asks him after he’d shown Mrs. Chilton out. 

Will shakes his head, ‘No I think she didn’t have anything to hide Jack’, he mutters, staring the chair in which Mrs. Chilton sat. He could still smell her perfume faintly, lily of the valley. He can envision Fredrick laid out in an expensive coffin, lilies artfully arranged around the corpse so as to obscure any wounds Hannibal had left on his body. He could see Mrs. Chilton stood next to the casket, staring at it with cold disapproving eyes.

A disappointment in death, as in life. 

‘Well I guess we’ll just have put Dr. Chilton’s personality flaws down to his mother, looks like Freud was onto to something after all’, Jack says, sitting back onto his office chair. He looks tired, Will can sense without asking that Mrs. Chilton had been his last lead. 

‘Its always more complex than that’, Will murmurs, but has to admit Jack makes a good point. He can see now where Fredrick inherited his grasping need to achieve from. 

He wonders whether he should tell Chilton about his mothers visit to Jack’s office, whether Fredrick would be surprised by his mothers apathetic reactions to their questions. 

He decides it would be too cruel to tell him at this point in time. 

Jack is looking at him, Will can tell he’s zoned out for little too long. Jack is probably wondering what he’s thinking. Will hasn’t got many good lies lined up to be able to answer him. 

‘How are you feeling Will?’, Jack asks. 

This catches Will off-guard, he blinks at Jack stupidly for a second.  
Pretty fucking putrid, probably wouldn’t be an acceptable answer. 

‘Okay’, Will chances, trying to maintain eye-contact with Jack, even through it instinctively makes him uncomfortable. 

Jack nods, his eyes read a mixture of disbelief and worry. 

‘You’ve taken a punch recently’, he says, his eyes running over Will’s bandaged temple. 

‘I got into a bit of an argument at a bar last night’, Will mutters, shuffling on the spot, in a way that Will hopes Jack interprets as embarrassment. 

‘Drinking isn’t going to solve your problems Will’, Jack says in a fatherly tone. 

Will restraints himself from snapping back that being incarnated for a string of murders he didn’t commit hadn’t helped his problems either. 

‘Yeah, I learnt that lesson the hard way last night’, Will replies, shrugging his shoulders. 

Jack just looks at him long and hard for a moment, then waves his hand in a sign of dismissal. 

‘Take care Will’, he says and it sounds like he genuinely means it. 

‘I’ll try Jack’, Will replies, hoping that he doesn’t too false when he says it. 

\-----

He gets back to the house around 5pm, he’s expected at Hannibal’s at 7pm on the dot. He’s only got enough time to take a quick shower, pull on some half decent clothing and try to tame his hair a bit. 

Chilton surprises him by being asleep downstairs on the couch, he’s even got Buster laid across his lap. Will is doubly taken aback by this as Chilton has previously pushed the little dog off him every time he tried to jump up. Maybe he’d climbed on top of Fredrick while he slept, Will didn’t know and didn’t have the time to really think about it. He just hoped Fredrick wouldn’t freak out too much when he woke up. 

Will is also surprised by the apparent cleanliness of his house, his living room has been dusted, there were no dishes left in the sink, and there even seemed to be slightly less dog hair on the rugs. He found his list from that morning pinned up on the fridge, a couple of the items have been crossed off. 

Looks like Chilton was aware of how much his hosts good will effected his chances of survival in the near future. 

Will can’t help to chuckle when he notices even his dog figurines have been wiped down. 

His good humour disperses slightly when he finds the charred husk of a vegetation pizza in the oven, Chilton had obviously tried and failed to cook himself dinner. 

He debates whether he should wake Fredrick up before he goes out to try to avoid another anxiety attack, but the doctor looks so comfortable snuggled up into the couch cushions that Will doesn’t have the heart. 

He leaves Fredrick a quickly scribbled note about Hannibal’s dinner invite, with the reassurance he would be home before 11pm. Then after much internal conflict he writes ‘thank you for cleaning the house’ at the very bottom, in very small letters. 

He casts one last look over the sleeping doctor before leaving, wishing for a moment they could switch places.

\----

Hannibal greets him at the door, impeccably dressed always in a light grey suit with a claret coloured waistcoat. 

‘Will’, he simply says, but the tone he uses is filled with layers of rich meaning. Will can pick out a few of the key notes through Hannibal’s warm overlay of charm. Warmth, welcome, possession. 

Hannibal Lecter is the only man Will’s ever met who can captivate a person with one word.  
He still can’t decide whether he’s more disturbed by Hannibal’s ability or entranced by it. Maybe he doesn’t want to know the answer. 

Alana is waiting for them in what Will can only call a drawing room rather than a simple lounge. She is lovely as always, her dark curls spilling over her shoulders catching occasionally on the gentle slope of her chest. Her eyes are filled with mixture of contentment and desire, when she glances towards Hannibal. When ever her eyes brush over Will however, all he can see is thinly veiled pity, and a buried wariness that keeps threatening to rise to the surface. 

‘Its good to see you Will’, she says and Will can tell she means it, but is slightly offended by the distance in her voice. 

He’d been half in love with Alana for as long as he’d been teaching for the FBI. 

He’d once thought she’d felt something similar for him as well. 

Obviously Hannibal has trumped him on that score. He couldn’t really blame her, if he was in her position he’d have chosen Hannibal over himself. 

They retire to the dining room quickly, Will can sense that Hannibal, ever the attentive host has taken note of the slight awkwardness between his two guests and wishes to smooth it over as quickly as possible.

Hannibal’s dinning room is sumptuous and intricately designed. Will could have spend hours picking it apart, listing all the emotions Hannibal had wanted each object to evoke. Will can glean from his brief glances at the decor a low simmering desire for dominance, hidden under a veneer of cultured charm. He wonders how Alana can’t feel it, feel Hannibal’s skilled fingers sliding into her mind, maneuvering her like a puppet on a string. He wanted to shake her and scream for her wake up and run, but instead he is forced to watch Hannibal pore her a glass of red wine and see her smile at him adoringly. 

Even Fredrick Chilton had clinched Hannibal was a Cannibal for Gods sake. 

None as blind as those who will not see. 

The dinner is predictably delicious. Hannibal serves them seared beef tongue on slices of thinly cut ciabatta bread for the starter. Will looks at plate and can’t help recall Fredrick’s comments about Hannibal joking he would eat the doctors tongue. He wonders whether if Hannibal had designed to kill Doctor Chilton that day in his house what meat would actually be before him at this moment. He swallows his disgust, mindful that Hannibal is watching him and takes a bite. 

It tastes amazing, human or no.

They discuss light topics at dinner, Alana’s new car, Hannibal’s thoughts on the newest art exhibition, Will chips in a few comments about lectures he’s writing. It all very low key and comfortable. 

As comfortable as knowingly consuming another humans flesh can be. 

After dinner Hannibal leads Will into his study under the premise to retrieve his after dinner port from the liquor cabinet. 

Once they’re alone in the darkened room, Hannibal subtly directs the conversation into more murky waters. 

‘Fredrick Chilton is still thought to be at large’, Hannibal says as he carefully uncorked the bottle.

Will nods, he’s attempting to distract himself from Hannibal’s probing stare by examining an animal skull Hannibal has mounted on his wall. The empty mouth cavity seems to leer at him, with an intensity that makes him deeply uncomfortable. 

‘Do you believe Chilton still to be at large?’, Hannibal continues, he hasn’t made any effort to mask the real curiosity in his tone, signalling to Will that for the moment Hannibal doesn’t suspect him of harboring Chilton. 

Will manufactures a believable snort of laughter, ‘Chilton probably crashed his ridiculous car into a giant hedge along a back road somewhere, I’m sure the only reason the FBI hasn’t found him is because he’s still desperately trying to reverse out’. 

‘Do you believe he’s the ripper?’, asks Hannibal. Will can feel the other man’s breath on the back of his neck. Hannibal has moved silently behind him, close enough to hold him in his arms or wrap his fingers around Will’s throat with relative ease. 

Will turns to face Hannibal, they are close, only a few inches apart. Will can feel the gentle caress of Hannibal’s breath on his face.

‘No, he lacked…’, Will begins, watching Hannibal’s pupils dilate as he speaks. 

Desire?

Is someone like Hannibal capable of baser impulses like lust?

‘…Finesse’, Will finishes, he says the word quietly with emphasis. 

Hannibal’s mouth curls into a barely perceptible smile. A smile Will can’t help but think is only for him. 

‘We mustn’t keep a lady waiting’, Hannibal says, gracefully step away from Will and picking up the silver tray he’s laid with three glasses. The liquid swirls with the movement, thick and vicious like blood. 

Will follows Hannibal out the room, feeling the gaze of the skulls empty eye sockets bore into his back the entire time. 

\----

That night he woke up screaming. 

In his dream the skull was devouring him, starting with his feet then working up. Will had heard his bones crunch between its rows of teeth, seen his flesh stripped off and disappearing into the cavernous maw of its throat. 

Hannibal had been sat watching, sipping a glass of red wine, laughing and laughing. 

Will fought frantically with the bed covers, he was drenched with sweat. The two dogs, Skipper and Trudy, who’d been curled up in the sheets were barking uncontrollably at their masters distress. Will was still half-consumed in the darkness, trying to crawl his way out. 

He doesn’t hear the footsteps on the stairs, too engrossed in his night terror. But he’s feel a pair of arms wrapping themselves around his convulsing body.

‘Will, calm down, you’re going to hurt yourself!’, a frantic voice says. 

Will can make out a hazy figure, tousled black hair and a pair of frightened green eyes. 

His breaths become slower and less laboured as he wakes up more fully. The arms that hold him loosen and a hand begins to gently rub his back. 

‘Ssh, you’re waking up in a safe place Will. No one is going to hurt you here’, murmurs a voice. 

Will allows himself to be soothed and laid back down onto the bed. The hand moves from his back to his arms, gentle motions of finger tips running up and down.

He mind attempts to piece the fractured images together and it settles on Alana Bloom, her calm, soft voice and gentle touches. He reaches out for the figure, and despite the squeak of protest he gets in response, he puts her down into a hug. Will buries his head into Alana’s shoulder, expecting sweet smelling curls, but instead finds only skin. Alana relaxes into the embrace with what sounds like an indignant huff. Will stays like this for a while, until he is no longer shaking. Alana feels this and makes to pull away, but Will holds on tighter. 

‘Please don’t go’, he mumbles. 

Alana sighs and settles herself next to Will, allowing herself to be pulled into his desperate embrace. 

Will falls back into a gentle sleep, enjoying the comforting warmth of Alana’s body next to his. 

\---  
Will is woken the next morning by light filtering through the front windows, he can hear a couple of the larger dogs scratching at the door to be let outside. He knows he should get up but he’s overwhelming comfortable, snuggled up against Alana, listening to her gentle breaths. Alana has one arm wrapped around his waist and her head tucked comfortably under his chin. 

Will presses his head into her hair and breaths in the sweet scent of her aftershave. 

Wait aftershave?

Will sits bolts upright, throwing Fredrick Chilton’s arms off of his body. The other man grumbles and tries to grab a handful of blanket to make up for the loss of warmth. 

Will stares at the other man with increasingly building horror. 

‘What the hell?’, he whispers. 

‘volver a domir bebe, su demasiode temparano’, murmurs Fredrick sleepily, before turning over and blearily opening his eyes. 

These aforementioned eyes widen in shock at the sight of Will Graham. Fredrick attempts to scramble up but instead ends up rolling messily out of bed onto the floor. The dogs happily swarm him, licking and generally nuzzling despite Fredrick’s waving hands and indignant cries. 

Will gathers up the last dregs of his fractured masculinity and sharply calls them off the poor doctor. Buster ignores Will and settles himself proudly in Dr. Chilton’s lap, tail waging. 

They stare at each other for a moment, Fredrick is going steadily redder by the second. Will doesn’t even want to consider the fact that they’re both only dressed in t-shirts and boxers. 

Will speaks first clearing his throat as gruffly as possible, ’So do you want a coffee?’, he asks, looking everywhere but at Fredrick. 

‘Sounds good’, says Fredrick, looking everywhere but at Will. 

Buster yips happily and completely oblivious to the tense situation lifts his back leg and pees on Chilton. 

Chilton looks down at steadily growing pool of dog urine he’s sitting in with a mix of horror and frank disbelief. 

‘Yeah I should have warned you he does that’, says Will, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. 

He can still hear Fredrick scolding Buster twenty minutes later when he’s finished making them both a coffee and a bowl of oatmeal.


	3. Thanks for feeding the chinchilla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chilton and Will develop something like a domestic routine, Will learns a little more about Fredrick's past.

They don’t talk about that morning again. Chilton seems embarrassed enough for them both, he can hardly look at Will for at least three days. 

Thankfully their surprise sleeping arrangement makes both of them forgot about their argument and they can begin to build a semi-normal routine around each other.

As normal a routine as a suspected serial killer and a mentally disturbed FBI profiler can have. 

For the next week Chilton cleans, cooks when he’s in a good mood which amounts to about three meals, two of which he almost burns down Will’s house preparing. He also watches TV, Buster, despite the ‘pee’ incident has actually earned a place in Fredrick’s heart or at least his lap, where the little mutt curls up happily while Fredrick watches daytime soaps. 

Will goes about his normal lecturing schedule at the academy, looks after the dogs, fixes boat engines on the carpet (much to Fredrick bafflement), and makes his lures. 

He’s trying to concentrate on a particularly complex knot one afternoon when Fredrick leans over and startles him. 

‘What are you doing with all those bits of string Will?’, Fredrick asks, he sounds genuinely curious. One of his soaps must not be airing today. 

‘Making a lure’, Will replies tensely, trying to get back it. 

Fredrick stands there watching him, until Will gets annoyed. 

‘Do you need something Fredrick?’, he asks.

‘I’m just trying to picture what’s attractive about fishing’, Fredrick says, he has his head cocked to one side and a thoughtful expression on his face. 

‘I don’t think you’d enjoy it’, mutters Will. 

‘Why do you enjoy it Will?’, asks Fredrick. 

‘Are you trying to psychoanalyze me with my hobbies?’, Will says, dropping the piece of wire he’d been trying to thread. His concentrations was gone, there wasn’t any point in carrying on. 

‘Maybe I just wanted to talk’, Fredrick says, he rolled his eyes then walked back over to the couch to switch the TV back on. 

Christ we’re acting like a married couple on the edge of divorce, Will thinks to himself. 

‘I enjoy it because its calming’, Will says, more to the room than to Fredrick. 

Fredrick looks from the remote startled by Will’s sudden confession. 

‘Oh fair enough’, he replies in a tone that’s deliberately dismissive, fixing his eyes squarely on the television screen. 

This just annoys Will more, Fredrick started this conversation he could at least attempt to be interested in it. 

‘You were never particularly interested in talking about my hobbies during therapy’, Will says, ‘why now?’

‘I wasn’t living with you during your therapy’, Fredrick replies, although he’s still got one eye on the tv, Will catches him glancing over, in what he probably thinks is a ‘subtle’ way. Fredrick Chilton could never resist anyone paying him attention.  
‘What do you do for fun Fredrick?’, asks Will, having already come up with a list of boring and pretentious things to tick off in his head. He’s going to call ‘Fredrick Chilton’ bingo. 

‘Well Will seeing as you’ve asked’, Fredrick switches off the TV and pauses, making a face that Will is sure has to be exaggerated, or Fredrick is just the most cartoonist man in existence.

‘I enjoy art galleries, reading, classical music and theatre’, Fredrick says smugly, like having even a passing interest in any of the above is a major achievement within itself. 

Will’s hit a score of 45, he’s also expected Fredrick to say Polo, but that would be too pretentious even for him. 

‘Sounds neat’, Will says, dismissively as possible.

Fredrick makes an indignant huff, ’I don’t expect you to share any of my interests of course’. 

Will is silent for a moment considering his next move.

‘I actually like Chopin a lot’, Will says, ‘its calming’.

‘I never thought you’d be so cultured Will’, Fredrick replies haughtily, one eyebrow raised. 

‘Tell me your top ten composers then Fredrick’, Will says, leaning back in his chair. He’s willing to bet good money, that ‘classical music lover’ Fredrick Chilton can’t even name five. 

Chilton’s face goes red, ‘I don’t want to bore you Will…’, he starts. 

‘Please Fredrick, like you said we’re living together now, it would nice to understand each other wouldn’t you say’, Will says, grinning. 

‘Well of course Mozart…’, Fredrick begins looking flustered, 

‘Of course’, Will agrees. 

‘Then Beethoven, Bach…’, Fredrick continues, he’s struggling already much to his obvious chagrin. 

‘Go on’, Will says. 

‘I…I…no one else springs to mind at this present moment’, Fredrick says looking far too flustered for the topic of conversation. 

‘What kinds of music do you actually like Fredrick’, Will asks. 

Fredrick visibly deflates a little, ‘I do like classical music’, he says in quieter voice, ‘I just…a lot of it sounds the same to me’

‘Same here’, Will says more kindly. A spark of curiosity has been lit within him, in a way its kind of refreshing to get a glimpse at the man under the gaudy suit. 

‘I like musicals quite a bit’, murmurs Fredrick, in a voice that’s so quiet Will has to get him to repeat himself. 

‘Musicals?’, says Will. It makes a lot of sense come to think of it, that flashy, gaudy Fredrick would like musicals. Its also kind of endearing.

‘Which ones do you like?’, he asks, genuinely interested now despite himself. 

‘Now there’s a question Will!’, Fredrick says, his eyes lit up with sudden enthusiasm, ’Cats is glorious, a true classic, oh don’t get me started on ‘Rent’, ‘Cabaret’ of course, phantom of the opera…’  
Fredrick continues naming musical after musical, including his own personal opinions along the way. His eyes are ablaze with happiness as the memories of watching the shows flood back to him. 

Will watches him with a growing smile on his face, it can’t help it, Fredrick’s sheer joy about his subject matter is infectious. 

‘Why didn’t you just say musicals in the first place?’, he can’t help but ask. 

Fredrick suddenly stops enthusing abruptly, ‘Well, its not considered cultured by most of Baltimore society’, he starts, the light fading out of his eyes as rapidly as it had appeared.

‘Who gives a rats ass about culture if you love it?’, retorts Will.

Chilton gives him a sad little smile, ‘Its considered rather faux pas, in this day and age to fit a stereotype so well Will’, he says.

‘What do you mean?’, asks Will. Then he gets it in a flash, ’Oh’, is all he can say. 

Chilton is eying his warily as if expecting condemnation. 

‘I mean, its okay to be a straight guy and like football, so why not a…’, Will wonders whether ‘gay’ is still the preferred term, ‘not-straight guy and enjoy musicals’, he finishes finally, unwilling to offend Fredrick by calling him a slur by accident. 

Fredrick looks as if he’s trying not to laugh. 

‘Thank you Will’, he says softly. 

‘Um, I’m going to fix myself some lunch’, says Will, ‘do you want something?’

‘No I’m okay’, Fredrick’s replies, he’s still smirking a little. 

Will escapes to the kitchen before he dies from social awkwardness. 

\-----

Will doesn’t stop being annoyed by Fredrick, he still finds the doctor’s sighs and indignant complaints makes him grind his teeth. But nevertheless he has began to tolerate his unexpected guest. 

Living with another person has started to feel more natural and less strained, Fredrick now creeps into his thoughts unhindered while he’s shopping for groceries. Will’s started picking up certain fruit and vegetables that Chilton prefers despite himself. He also notes with a kind of petty amusement that Fredrick seems completely disgusted by Bananas for some reason. 

When he brought a bag home one day, thinking Chilton would be pleased with some variation in his restricted diet, Fredrick had just looked at him with horror. 

‘I am not eating those Will’, Fredrick hissed, going red-faced for some weird reason. 

Will had just assumed Fredrick had some sort of allergy and had finished off the banana’s himself not wanting them to go to waste. Fredrick had increased the craziness factor by refusing to even sit across from Will if he was eating a banana. 

Will just put it down to Fredrick being a prissy git. 

Fredrick’s reaction when he brings home a battered DVD recording of ‘Cats’ is one for the record books. 

He’s so happy he actually looks as if he could embrace Will for a second, before practically bouncing over to Will’s dusty DVD player and putting it on straight away. He also forces Will to watch it with him. 

On repeat. 

By the end of the week Will is close to throwing his DVD player out of the window if he has to listen to ‘Midnight’ one more time. Only he has the sneaking suspicion that if he did Chilton would go into the most epic sulk ever seen on earth and never speak to him again. 

He solves the problem by begrudgingly buying Chilton a selection of DVD’s, just to get some variation. 

He has to admit ‘Cabaret’ is pretty damn fantastic, but he’d rather be shot than let Chilton know so he adopts a fake strained look whenever Fredrick puts it on. 

When he catches himself humming the tune to ‘Life is a Cabaret’ while washing his car one morning, he knows things have gone too far. But even more oddly he doesn’t mind. 

Chilton responds to Will’s gifts with gestures of his own. At first they are subtle. Will notes that his house is beginning to smell more like fresh pine and less like dog. His books have been rearranged in order of size and his kitchen cupboards have been cleaned out of everything out of its sell by date. 

The most dramatic change is revealed on day seven when Will stumbles into his rarely used master bedroom to grab a clean shirt and finds all of his clothing has been meticulously rearranged. His forlornly scant collection of ties has even been put in order of colour. 

The bright purple tie with spots, that Beverly had cheekily given him for Christmas had been put in the middle of his tie rack. It makes him smile, even through it hurts. 

Will glanced down and noticed a box had been overturned at the back of the closet. In a flash of recognition he realizes it’s the same box he’d taken from his dad’s house five years ago. He’d been surprised that his dad had kept all of the stuff in it, it was filled with a mixture of photographs of Will as kid, school reports and even a copy of Will’s acceptance letter to Washington state. 

Will realizes with rising annoyance that Fredrick must have found the box when he was sorting through Will’s clothes and opened it. 

It looked like Dr. Chilton hadn’t left behind his voyeuristic tendencies at BSHCI. 

Will stormed downstairs to find Fredrick sat on the couch sipping a cup of tea and reading the paper that Will had brought him yesterday. This infuriates Will even more. 

‘Have you gone through my stuff?!’, Will shouts, Chilton jumps off the couch, upsetting his tea onto the floor. 

‘I…er…I’, Fredrick stammers, taken by surprise by Will‘s sudden outburst.

‘I can’t believe you’, Will runs a shaky hand through his hair, ‘wait I can actually, with all the recording equipment you’ve got rigged up in that hospital!’

Winston lets out a low whine, confused and frightened by his masters distress. The other dogs have taken on a wary look to them as well. Trudy’s ears are flat against her head. Even rambunctious Buster has shuffled under the coffee table. 

‘I was reorganizing your wardrobe’, Fredrick snaps, he’s regained his composure enough to puff up and look haughty, ‘I should have known you’d be completely unappreciative, I shouldn’t have bothered!’.

‘Unappreciative?’, Will lets out a harsh laugh, ‘I’m supposed to be grateful for you ferreting through my private space like a stalker!’ 

Chilton reddens at the word stalker, he quietly replies through clenched teeth, ‘I was just trying to be useful, your list said to clean the house’

‘I meant dust, wash dishes, lint roll the couch, not go through all my clothes’, Will bites back. His anger is dissipating, he’s starting to feel a little foolish. After all, it was just a box with some old useless stuff in it. Plus if Fredrick had been intending on snooping, he’d look as guilty as hell, not cold and defiant like he did right now. 

Chilton nods stiffly, ’Okay Will, I’ll stay clear of your clothing’, he says, there is a quiet fury in his eyes and hurt. Rebuffed, wounded hurt. 

Will suddenly feels like a complete ass. 

‘Well if that Will be all, I have to check on Lunch’, Fredrick bends down with effort and begins picking up the shattered pieces of cup from the floor. 

‘Do you need anything in…I can go to the store today’, Will mutters. 

Fredrick huffs, ‘I could use a few more vegetables and if you could get some black beans I’d be grateful’, he sounds calm but tension still hangs in the air. 

‘I…no ones ever done that before’, Will says quietly, more to himself than Fredrick.

Fredrick glances up, the expression on his face still cool, ‘Not even your father?’

‘No, I’ve looked after my stuff myself’, Will replies, shuffling on the spot. He can remember the clothes lines outside various trailers, the sick smell of mildew on damp cloth. Wearing socks until they were more hole than sock. 

Fredrick stops picking at the broken china a moment, before sighing, ‘Will I apologize for not asking permission to touch you’re things. But I was only trying to help’.

Will nods, ‘Yeah okay…I’m sorry I snapped at you. I didn’t need the stress at the moment’. The excuse sounded even more pathetic out loud. 

Fredrick just smiles bitterly in response and stands up shakily. Will can’t help but notice that the dogs are still cowering. His outburst must have really shaken them up. When Fredrick leaves the room, the dogs follow him, leaving Will alone with just Winston. 

Its stupid but can’t help but feel betrayed. He reaches out and strokes Winston’s golden fur, and the dog licks his hand soothingly. 

‘Okay I’m a dick, I get it buddy alright?’, Will says morosely. He can hear the clatter of pans in the kitchen. Fredrick seems to be taking some of his frustration out on Will’s utensils. 

Will decides to skip lunch. 

\---

This is how Will Graham finds himself in random mall in Baltimore staring at a shelf full of vegan chocolates. 

Buying Fredrick Chilton chocolate to apologize. This is not how he’d imagined his Saturday off work to say the least. 

Or any Saturday ever. 

He’d had to stray out of his normal comfort zone of several well-known stores to find anywhere that would sell something like this. But he hadn’t accounted for the problem of finding the right wrapper. Most of the chocolate was covered in gaudy paper or boxes with slogans like ‘I heart you’ and ‘To my lovely girlfriend’. 

God Will hated that it coming up to valentines, so so much right now. 

He’d thought about getting Fredrick a bottle of fancy shampoo or aftershave, but then he’d decided getting the other man something to rub over his naked body in the shower would be way too creepy. Plus his quick glance at the brand of aftershave that he‘d seen sat in his bathroom, had made him do a double take. One bottle of that stuff would be a quarter of his monthly salary. More proof Chilton had had more money than sense, despite the fact that Will had to begrudgingly admit the stuff did smell fantastic. 

He had not just thought that. Will felt like putting his head in his hands. 

A perky young sales girl chose that moment to swoop in on him, making him jump. 

‘Do you need some help sir?’, she asked.

Will scanned her face hoping to God that she never joined the FBI, and gulped down his pride, ‘Do have anything that would be suitable for a guy?’ he asks. 

The girl momentarily looks surprised, but then a knowing look dawns in her eyes, ‘Oh you looking for your boyfriend. That’s so cute!’, she says beaming. 

Will’s face is on fire. He wished the ground would open up and swallow him whole. 

‘Erm…I…’, he mutters. 

‘There’s a same-sex couples section over there, but if you’re looking specifically for vegan chocolates, this would be perfect!’, the girl chatters, reaching out and grabbing a pink box and handing to Will. 

Will looks down at the heart shaped pieces of chocolate, the box reads in bright looped letters ‘I love you baby’ and has a cartoon gay couple smooching on the front. Will imagines his fathers face, and wants to crawl into a hole and die. 

He shoves the box back on the shelf a little harder than necessary, ‘I’m not gay’, he snaps out. 

The girl looks affronted, ‘Okay fair enough sir, I’ll let you get back to you’re browsing’, she says, no longer smiling. 

After a good twenty minutes Will finally just grabs a box and quickly pays for it, before stalking out of the store. 

\--

Will pulls into his driveway three hours later, he hopes that Fredrick has had enough time to calm down.

He’s unloading the grocery bags from the car, when he’s suddenly greeted by the sight of six very happy dogs bounding up to him, snow in their fur. One very cold, but nevertheless, slightly more amenable Fredrick Chilton is following behind. 

‘I hope you got the black beans, or else dinners going to be ruined’, the doctor snaps as a greeting. 

Will nods and reaches down into one of the bags, before shoving a box into Chilton’s arms. 

‘Oh you want me to help unpack I guess…’ Fredrick starts to mutter, but then stops, he holds up the box to the light and scrutinises it, ‘Thanks for feeding the chinchilla’, he reads, looking at Will with mixed amusement and surprise. 

‘Its vegan’, Will blurts out, red-faced, the memory of that salesgirl‘s smile still vivid in his mind.

‘You brought me a box of chocolates to apologize?’, says Fredrick, a small smirk playing around his mouth. 

‘Yeah, don’t get used to it, this is a one off’, mutters Will, ‘here grab a bag’, in his embarrassment he almost throws one of the smaller bags into Fredrick’s arms. The force, although light causes the older man to sway slightly on his feet. 

Fredrick’s expression snaps back to sour, ‘I wouldn’t dream of getting special treatment from you Will’, he says, before hoisting the bag properly into his arms so he could hold it and his cane at the same time. Before turning and stamping back into the house. 

Will is left watching Chilton’s retreating back and sighs. He pets Churchill, his English bull-dog lightly on the head and wonders he was never going to get the hang of interacting with Fredrick properly. 

\---

They hardly speak for the rest of the afternoon. 

Fredrick goes back to sitting in front of the television with Buster in his lap, sending Will venomous looks every 30 minutes. Will spends his time, trying but failing to write out a plan of his Monday lectures for the academy. 

The box of chocolates lies on the coffee table, neglected. 

Will feels a headache coming on. 

Fredrick finally gets off the couch at 4 o’clock and saunters into the kitchen, deliberately ignoring Will as does so. 

‘Dinner should be ready in an hour or so’, Fredrick says, more to himself than to Will. 

Will glances up from his plan, hoping that was Fredrick’s way of declaring a truce.

‘Sounds great’, he says, hoping that his tone is enthusiastic enough to improve his guests black mood. 

Chilton gives him a look which blatantly translates as ‘oh you think you can get off that easy do you?‘. so Will just sighs and goes back to his work. If Chilton is going to be a bitch tonight, then Will was going to leave him to it. 

\----

Later when Will is sat the kitchen table with a plate of something that resembled a stew in front of him, he can’t help but think living with Chilton, even if he can be a bitch, has some perks.

The food in front of him smells great.

‘This is good’, Will begrudging admits after taking a bite. 

And it is good, more than good even despite the slightly burnt edge to the flavour. 

Fredrick tuts at him for talking with his mouth full. But a slight smile tugs at the corners of his mouth in response to Will’s compliment, and if Will is not mistaken his cheeks have flushed. 

Dr. Chilton seems to be blushing. Will doesn’t know what to make of this, so he passes it off as a trick of light. 

‘I’m not entirely useless at cooking’, says Chilton testily, as he separates the bean mix and the rice with his fork, ‘I have managed to keep myself alive for the past fifteen years’. 

‘What’s it called?’, Will asks, careful to swallow his food this time before speaking. Fredrick has cooked for him after all, so he might as well attempt to follow some of his house-guests fussy table manners. Just for this meal at least. 

‘Frijoles Negros’, Fredrick replied. The Spanish rolling off his tongue with practised ease. 

‘You’re Bilingual?’, Will says, more as a statement of fact that anything else. He’s heard Chilton speak Spanish before and he’d heard enough Spanish when he working in the field to know the difference between someone who’d learn Spanish and someone who was of Hispanic origin. Fredrick’s olive skin has always indicted his racial heritage, but Will had never imagined that prissy Dr. Chilton was that closely connected to his families immigrant origins. 

It seemed many of his preconceived notions about Fredrick Chilton were being challenged tonight. 

‘Yes’, Chilton snapped, retreating back behind his wall of belligerence. 

They ate in silence for a while after that. If Chilton wasn’t going to volunteer information about his past, Will wasn’t going to push him. He knew enough about what it felt like to have someone else rifling around inside your head.

‘My mother is Cuban actually’, Fredrick finally says, ‘so that’s the dialect her family taught me’. 

‘Did they teach you this recipe as well?’ asks Will. He can’t help being slightly curious despite himself. If anything it’s a sort of savage pleasure to get into Fredrick’s mind, to rake up information. Just like Chilton did to him when he was his inmate. 

It’s not that he actually wants to get to know Fredrick. No that’s not it at all. 

‘No, my grandmother taught me. My father didn’t like Cuban cuisine, so my mother rarely cooked it.’ Fredrick’s voice warms when he mentions his grandmother, in a way Will has never heard in his tone before. He doesn’t associate Fredrick Chilton with warmth. 

‘How did your mother feel about that?’, Will asks carefully. It’s blatant Freudian psychoanalysis. Tell me about your mother Fredrick. 

‘She didn’t seem to care very much, although my grandmother considered it a travesty’, replied Chilton staring past Will out the window. His eyes have a far-away look to them. He’s missed Will’s dig at him completely or doesn’t care. 

Remembering happier times, Will thinks. Unbidden one of his many childhood homes comes to mind. A broken down campervan, which leaned slightly to one-side and stank of mildew. His father is standing over the stove, stirring a bubbling pot. If Will closes his eyes he could still smell the spices, warm and rich in the air. His dad has been given a hearty amount of shrimp as payment for fixing a motor on the quay. A younger Will leans on a rickety table, trying not to drool. It’s the first hot meal he’s had in a week. 

Fredrick is still talking, when Will drifts back into the present. It‘s not usual for them to talk so much. They usually both close off at meal times. Exchanging insults and necessities only. 

‘…we used to go over there every weekend, and she’d cook Cuban food for me and my sisters. Said we needed some proper spices in our blood to keep us healthy’, Fredrick is saying this more to himself than to Will. 

Will can imagine a little boy, with a mop of unruly black hair reaching up to his grandmother with outstretched palms ‘Por favor, abuela, permítanme que agitar el recipiente!’.

‘You’ve got sisters?’, Will says, smiling. Fredrick the only boy in a family of girls. That he can imagine. 

‘I have three’, Fredrick replies. Taking a sip of water and looking at Will closely. Trying to gauge if he’s being mocked. 

‘Are you still in touch with them?’, asks Will. He’s enjoying this conversation, he can’t help it. The food and the talking are giving him something else to fixate on. Something different from the images of mutilated bodies that usually crowd his thoughts at this hour. Mutilated bodies and Hannibal Lecter. A combination for nightmares, ones which don’t stop when Will wakes up. 

‘Why do you care?’, says Fredrick, warily. 

‘Maybe I’d like to know the man I’m letting live in my house a little better’, replies Will. 

Fredrick huffs slightly, ‘Well if you must know. I’m still in touch with my eldest sister Colette. She has three daughters…my nieces. I’d help her out on occasion by baby-sitting when they were younger, she’s a single mother and a full-time nurse, so she needed the help. I don’t see them as often as I used too, since I moved to Baltimore, but I visit her during the holidays. I try to make sure…’ Fredrick pauses then. The smile that lit up his face when he mentioned his nieces has disappeared. He looks suddenly ten years older, ’…I used to make sure I could see the girls on their birthdays, this year I was going to take Susan, to ‘Beauty and the beast’, I had the tickets booked…’ 

Will envisions ‘Uncle Fredrick’ smiling indulgently, bundled up in an expensive coat, vainly trying to keep order amongst three small girls, as they jump up and down with glee. Standing in line, in the cold sunshine outside Baltimore theatre. For all his faults Chilton probably spoils his nieces rotten. 

It’s hard to connect this image, with that of the snide, smug Chilton who stared down his nose at him during therapy sessions. 

But then again, he’d never thought Chilton would end up sobbing in his shower. 

‘I don’t see my other sister Charlotte much, we’re on Christmas card terms. She works in business. Flies all over the world’, there’s no smugness in Chilton’s tone when he says this, only familial pride, ‘she had a place at medical school…like me, but she refused to go. Went and studied foreign languages instead. My father was disappointed. But at the end of the day, she’s proved the most successful out of us all, ironically. But I’m sure I’m boring you by this point, talking about this’ Fredrick makes a move to stand up, reaching out for Will’s plate. 

Will reaches over at the same time and tries to stop him, ‘No let me do it, you cooked dinner’, he says. 

‘Nonsense, Will, you’re exhausted’, tuts Fredrick in his doctor voice, that Will hates. 

Will frowns, he’s not going to be babied by Dr. Chilton. 

I’m fine’, He says, making another swipe for the plate. Instead he grabs Fredrick’s hand. It takes a moment for Will to realize what he’s done. Fredrick’s hand is soft and fits comfortably in his. 

Their eyes meet simultaneously, and then they both look down. They both recoil from each other so fast that Will’s plate is knocked off the table and smashes. 

The dogs come bouncing into the room, woken up from napping. A riot of fur and confusion. Will attempts to fend them off, worried about sharp shards getting into paws. 

Fredrick lets out a long sigh, ‘You’re insufferably stubborn Mr. Graham’. 

\---

As penance for the broken plates Chilton makes Will watch ‘Cats’ with him for the 80th time.  
Will’s just glad they seem to be getting along a bit better again, he can’t take the added aggravation of a pissed off Fredrick in his life right now. 

They both sit on the couch, three dogs between them and buster on Chilton’s lap. Occasionally the dogs let out a bark at the TV screen at the strange human pretending to the species that is their arch nemesis, but Chilton soon shushes them. 

Will has noticed that the dogs have started to respond to Chilton more after the last few days, buster being the most obvious one, but the others have also warmed to their masters strange guest. Fredrick now always has a couple of dogs tailing him through-out the house, Will can hear him scolding them out of the bathroom every morning. 

Seeing a man has fastidious as Fredrick being mobbed by his pack of dogs, never fails to make Will smile. 

By the time the film draws to a close both Fredrick and Will are yawning.

‘I‘m going to get to bed‘, Fredrick says, gently shifting Buster from his lap and making to go upstairs to his room  
.  
Buster whines, although Chilton has warmed to the little dog, he still won’t allow him into his room with him. 

Will suddenly remembers something Fredrick said earlier, his curiosity is too great for him to resist asking Fredrick the answer to a question that’s been plaguing his mind through-out watching the film. 

‘You said you had three sisters, but you only told me about two’, says Will.

Fredrick pauses on the stairs a moment, ‘I should have said, I had three sisters. Helen, my other sister, died of leukaemia when she was eight.’ 

Will doesn’t know what to say. 

‘Goodnight Will’, Fredrick says filling the silence for him. 

‘Don’t cancel those tickets’, blurts out Will. 

Fredrick stares at him in confusion, ’I didn’t know I’d have the pleasure of attending any events in the near future’, he replies with an edge of tired sarcasm.

‘No…I meant, your nieces…Susan’s birthday’, mutters Will, feeling like a complete idiot.

‘I’ll have caught him by them’, Will continues with a confidence he doesn’t feel. 

Fredrick looks at him with an expression Will can’t place. 

‘I’m touched by the thought Will’, Fredrick replies softly, he looks as if he‘d like to say more but can‘t find the words. 

‘Night Fredrick’, Will says. 

Chilton nods sheepishly. Then makes his way up the rest of the stairs. 

It was only after Will hears the bedroom door shutting he realizes the look on Fredrick’s face had been something like hope. 

Its oddly comforting that someone actually believes he can catch Hannibal, and even more odd that that person is Fredrick Chilton.


	4. The custodian of harsh truths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this one, I was on holiday in Italy over the past week. Then I had a stomach bug, so this chapters taken a bit longer than usual.

It was only their third week in the house together, but Will had noticed Fredrick was very careful not to let Will see him naked, or even shirtless. The door was not only closed but firmly locked, every single time Fredrick went to the bathroom. He also seemed to be making sure that he showered at times when Will was either out of the house or before he woke up. Whereas Will would go around the house in a shirt and underpants if he didn’t have to be at work, Fredrick would be fully dressed. Always. Usually in something conservative like a turtleneck. Will wondered whether Fredrick had ever owned a pair of sweatpants. 

Will also got the sense that he was being watched, sometimes he turned his head, only to have Fredrick pointedly look away in the opposite direction, red-faced. 

Will doesn’t know what to make of it, but its putting him on edge. 

Apart from this little quirk however, Will has to admit that he and Chilton have managed to create a semblance of a domestic life. He spends increasing amounts of time after work sat on his couch watching a film with Fredrick, surrounded by his dogs and the comforting hum of the other mans laughter. He buys the ingredients and Fredrick cooks the meals, with increasing success. More often than not Will now returns home to a hot meal rather than a sulky Fredrick and a plate of slightly charred toast. 

Will finds that he’s discovering more and more things he actually likes about Fredrick. Fredrick’s fastidiousness has ceased to be an annoyance and is actually working wonders for Will’s house, which is now becoming more and more of a home. Fredrick has even taken to coming on a few of Will’s morning dog walks, he holds Busters lead for Will so he can focus on controlling the bigger dogs. Will notices that Fredrick has started picking some of the wild flowers that grow around the edges of his woodland and putting them in jam jars around the house. 

The first moment he really feels a genuine stab of affection for Fredrick is when he’s feeding the dogs one morning and finds Buster is missing. He searches the house becoming increasingly worried, until he takes the risk of peaking around Chilton’s bedroom door and finds that Buster is curled up at the bottom of Fredrick’s bed. Fredrick is still huddled under the covers, with only his mop of unruly black hair poking out the top as a signal to his whereabouts. 

Will has a smile on his face all morning afterwards. 

Another good thing that has happened is that after three weeks of no news or leads, the search for Fredrick Chilton has died down. Fredrick’s face is longer plastered over the national newspapers, and he only warrants the occasional mention in the local ones. 

Fredrick Chilton has become old news. 

Plus, as always, there are as ever many more serial killers just lining up to take over from the alleged Chesapeake ripper. 

\---

The scent of earth, dark and rich, mixed with the creeping odour of rotting flesh. 

Will closes his eyes, these are the memories that would later haunt his dreams. He’d often wished working this job, that he’d been born without a sense of smell, he didn’t know how Hannibal with his uniquely keen nose could stand it. 

Maybe because Hannibal wasn’t disgusted by things normal humans would shy away from. 

The stables were lit by rows of light bulbs strung up on the beams above their heads, bathing the scene in a flickering half light. Brian was knelt on the ground, examining the body of the young woman they’d pulled out of the horse with what looked like professional interest. Jimmy was close by, as he always was when Brian was around, holding a camera. Will noted that although Brian is careful not to show any emotion in response to the crime scene, Jimmy has placed a hand subtly on the other mans shoulder. 

Women’s bodies always get to Brian now, after Beverly.

Jack’s face as always on location is set like a granite slab. His eyes however flickered with a multitude of emotions. 

Will could feel his empathy tugging at him, threatening to draw him down into the last moments of the woman’s life, the darkness and slow suffocation. 

He feels a hand on his shoulder. 

Hannibal is beside him, close enough to hear his soft intakes of breath. He is watching Will rather than the corpses, who he’d only spared a brief, contemptuous glance. 

Will felt himself being analysed, the skin on the back of his neck prickled. 

No one else in this room knew how close they were to death. That it was standing here with them, dressed in a suit. 

‘Will’, Jack says, his voice carries an air of expectation. 

Will swallows, he’d been dreading Jack’s signal. It was time to down into the dark again and feel a little more of himself be consumed by it.

‘I may need a little more than time than usual with this one’, is all he says in response. 

\-----

By the time he gets home that night he’s had to pull over to the side of the road to vomit more than once. 

‘I’m fine okay’, is the first thing he says to a worried looking Fredrick who greets him at the door. 

Fredrick takes one look at Will, his battered appearance and the dirt staining his pants.

‘Do you want my professional opinion on that Will?’ , he says, in his doctor voice. 

Will gives him a withering look.

Fredrick just rolls his eyes and says, ‘Okay fine, but I have to insist you sit yourself down and I’ll make some tea and toast’ 

‘You’re not my mother Fredrick’, says Will indignantly, but he sinks down the couch anyway. 

Fredrick returns ten minutes later with a steaming cup and a plate of hot buttered toast. 

Will takes both from him with a grateful look, if he was on his own right now he’d probably be drinking whiskey in the dark. 

‘How bad was it?’, Fredrick asks after Will’s finished the toast. 

‘Bad’, Will replies, he closes his eyes and appreciates how the cup of tea is warming his fingers. 

‘There was a woman sewn inside a horse’, Will continues after a long pause. 

Fredrick pales a little, ‘Oh’, he says, looking as if he wished he hadn’t asked Will in the first place. 

‘Then there was a bird stitched inside of her’, Will says. 

Fredrick looks frankly baffled. 

‘It was still alive’, Will finishes. 

‘I see’, is all Fredrick can say in response. 

They sit quietly for a while on the couch, the dogs milling around Will’s legs. Fredrick knows better than to speak by this point. 

‘I’ll keep the casserole for tomorrow I think’, Fredrick says finally.

‘What type is it?’, Will says in reply, more to make things seem a little more normal than anything else. 

‘Three bean’

‘Sounds good’ 

‘Thank you Will’ 

Will suddenly feels his stomach churn and before he can stop himself he leans over and violently vomits onto the hardwood floor. He’s still heaving over the side five minutes later, when he feels Fredrick’s hand on his back, rubbing it in gentle circles. 

‘Feel up to this’, Fredrick says matter a factly, holding out a glass of water.

Will leans over and dry retches again in response. 

‘Okay, perhaps not then’, Fredrick says. He waits for Will to finish and then helps to guide him shakily down onto the couch, putting a cushion under his head. 

‘You’re working yourself too hard’, he scolds in a gentle tone, placing a hand on Will’s forehead, ‘You’re feverish Will’.

Will doesn’t even have the energy to make a sarcastic quip in response. 

Fredrick busies himself getting a bucket from the sink for Will to use if he feels sick again. He also lays out a couple of paracetamol on the coffee table and a glass of water. 

‘I know you can’t stomach it right now but later you might want them’, he says. He glances Will over, looking worried. 

Will is trying not to show how terrible he actually feels in front of Fredrick, but he can’t help but let a small groan escape as he feels his stomach do another back flip. 

Fredrick shakes his head. 

‘Try to get some sleep Will, I’ll sort the dogs out tonight’, Fredrick says, placing a hand on Will’s shoulder, letting it lie there a little longer than necessary. 

Will nods weakly.

‘Thanks’, he muttered. 

Fredrick lingers a little longer, but when it becomes apparent there’s little more he can do for Will he quietly goes to the kitchen and starts getting things ready to feed the dogs.  
Will finds the sounds that Fredrick is making in his kitchen comforting, despite his ever increasing headache. He’d been sick in his house a handful of times before and had found nothing quite so lonely as being ill alone. The thought had crossed his mind a couple times, what would happen if he’d had an accident or got extremely ill in his isolated house, the conclusions he’d come too hadn’t been pretty. 

He closed his eyes and tried to swallow down a little of his nausea. He hoped that there wasn’t any pressing need for him to be at the crime scene tomorrow because he’d most likely not be up to it.

Fredrick was humming in the kitchen, the dogs accompanying him with a chorus of hungry barks. 

Will felt tiredness take over and he managed to drift into a thankfully dreamless sleep. 

\-----

Fredrick finds him on the floor the next morning, Will has no memory of trying to get up off the couch which he must have attempted at some point in the night. His shirt is soaked in sweat and he’s already heaving when Fredrick rushes over to him and turns him onto his side just in time before he chokes on his own vomit. 

Will can dimly hear Fredrick murmuring something softly in Spanish above him as he continues to dry heave. 

‘I knew I shouldn’t have left you alone last night’, Fredrick mutters angrily, more to himself than Will. 

Fredrick with no small effort manages to get Will propped upright against the couch, Will sees several figures swimming in front of him. 

‘Will…I’m sorry but I’m going to have to give you a wash, you’re covered in…’, Fredrick’s voice filters through the buzzing in Will’s ears. Fredrick could be telling him that he was going to eat him as a side dish and he still couldn’t bring himself to care right now. 

He only realizes what Fredrick has decided to do when he feels the wet warmth of a flannel pressed against his face. He groans weakly and tries to swat it away, but Fredrick simply makes a tutting sound pressing on regardless of his patients discomfort.

The next challenge is getting Will onto his bed, which thankfully is tucked into the corner of the living room. Fredrick who at times struggles to support his own weight, now has the dubious task of transporting a feverish, taller man across the room. 

Will tries to help him as much as he is able, but still it takes the pair of them a good ten minutes to cross the room. Fredrick huffs and mutters swearwords under his breath the whole time. 

They make it in the end. Will collapses onto the bed, taking Fredrick down with him. For a moment Fredrick is trapped under the full weight of Will and protests against this with indignant noises until Will gathers the strength to roll off him. 

‘You’re heavier than you look Will’, Fredrick says in a voice that carries both exasperation and oddly enough affection in equal measure. 

Will mumbles into a pillow incoherently. 

Fredrick tends to him for the rest of the day. If Will had any energy at all left over he’d be surprised, but all of it has been expended on trying to keep from chucking his guts up too violently. His dogs gather into a huddle next to his bed, watching him worriedly. 

Fredrick checks him over hourly, bringing water, pills and changes his sick bucket with poorly masked disgust. He even turns the TV down to make sure Will can get some sleep in. 

This shift in routine works to a certain degree until at about 6pm Will is awoken up to the sound of tires on his driveway. 

He rolls over and spies Fredrick sitting bolt upright on the couch, cup frozen half on route to his mouth. He looks over to Will desperately for guidance. 

‘Hide!’, Will hisses.

Fredrick casts frantic looks around the room until he spies the closet build into the stairway. He hobbles over and shuts himself in as quickly as possible. Buster, unwisely attempts to follow him and whines pathetically at being shut out. 

Will has just enough time to pull the covers up over his body to maintain some semblance of dignity before a sharp knock sounds from the door.

A voice that haunts his nightmares echoes around the room.

‘Are you in there Will’, Hannibal’s muffled voice filters through the heavy wooden door.

Will closes his eyes and swallows hard before answering. 

‘Yes, come in’, he calls as loudly as he can with a parched throat. 

Hannibal opens the unlocked door and gracefully side steps the swarm of dogs that come to greet him. His eyes flick around the room once, taking in the minute details. His nose twitches almost imperceptibly at the stale smell of vomit. 

‘I’m sorry Will, to find you in such a state of ill health’, he says finally, walking over to Will’s prone form on the bed. 

Will can’t help to but think how much easier it would be for Hannibal to overpower him in his weakened state. 

‘No problem, just the flu or something I ate’, Will replies, running a hair through his hair in feeble attempt to make it a little more presentable. Hannibal makes him feel even more grimy and unwashed, standing before him in a light tan overcoat and suit. 

Hannibal leans forward and gently places a hand on Will’s forehead. Will tries not to flinch, Lecter’s hands are cold. 

‘Your temperature is a little higher than normal, but nothing to worry about’, says Hannibal, he’s staring into Will’s eyes intently, ‘I hope you are trying to drink as much fluid as possible Will’. 

‘I’m giving it my best shot’, mutters Will. He’s trying with all his mental strength not to glance over to the closet, to give Hannibal any indication of his guests presence. 

Buster unfortunately is doing it for him, he’s still sitting by the door whining and scratching at it. 

Hannibal looks over at the little dog with something like amusement. 

‘Is there someone hiding under your staircase Will?’, he asks, his tone light. 

Will’s blood turns to ice. 

He gives Hannibal a weak smile, a thousand excuses flying through his head like lightening. 

‘No, nothing that exciting…I’m trying to convert it into a storage space for my smoked fish’, he offers this explanation up lamely. 

Hannibal’s eyebrows rise a little, ‘It seems your dog has much better sense of smell than me Will’, he says jovially. His eyes flicker with some emotion Will cannot place. 

‘There’s only a couple hung in there at the moment, it was working on it last night before I got sick’, Will replies.

‘You’ve been working yourself too hard Will, I would suspect part of this sudden bout of illness down to plain exhaustion’, Hannibal says, he brings one hand to rest lightly on Will’s shoulder, ‘I was worried about you when Jack informed me you wouldn’t be present at the scene today’ 

‘Did you get any leads’, Will says, feeling a mixture of emotions churning in his gut at Hannibal’s physical contact. 

Fear, anticipation, desire.

‘There’s a man Jack would like you to interview when you’re well enough to get back into the field. He works in the stables, mentally disabled and seemingly harmless enough’, Hannibal says, in a voice that suggests seemingly harmless is a another way of saying potentially dangerous.

Oddly enough this term also applies to both of the men in the room right now. 

Hannibal is measuring his reaction, as he always is. Will can’t help but lean forward into Hannibal’s touch. 

It’s like a Mexican standoff with homoerotic tension instead of guns. 

Hannibal breaks the tension leaning forward and pushing the sweaty hair away from Will’s forehead with one finger. 

‘I’ll tell Jack you’ll need a few days’, he says, his voice barely rising above an intimate whisper, ‘Get some sleep Will’.

Will feels like a child being lulled to sleep by the monster under his bed.

‘Thanks Hannibal’, he replies, his voice imitating Hannibal’s tone without him meaning too. 

Hannibal smiles his barely perceptible smile and walks over to the door. He pauses just before opening it and takes one last glance at Buster, who’s still scratching at the closet door, then at Will. Then he slips out into the dusk.

Will waits on tender hooks until the sound of Hannibal’s car has long been eclipsed by more comfortingly normal noises. 

He lets out a deep sigh of relief and sinks back into the pillows. 

Fredrick chooses this moment to fall out of the closet, tangled up in several different types of fishing wire. He curses as when he hits the floor Buster begins licking his face enthusiastically.

‘Will could you get this mutt off of me!’, Fredrick snaps, turning his head desperately attempting to evade Busters waging tongue. Buster takes this as a challenge and jumps onto Chilton’s chest to continue the onslaught.

Will drags himself up and goes to help Fredrick out of the mess he’s made of himself. 

\-----

‘I never thought he’d leave’, mutters Fredrick, taking another shaky sip of tea. 

Will is cautiously sipping a cup of camomile, which Fredrick has assured him is supposed to help with an upset stomach.  
‘Hm’, Will mumbles into his cup, his heart is still racing a little at Hannibal’s visit and its possible consequences. Hannibal might know about Fredrick. Of course he wasn’t going to tell Fredrick about this possibly, he didn’t want a repeat of the first night. 

‘Are you alright Will?’, asks Fredrick, the concern in his eyes seems genuine. 

It’s always a surprise for Will to find Fredrick Chilton is thinking about someone other than himself. But its admittedly a nice change to have someone thinking about him, caring about him. 

Fredrick Chilton cares about me?, the thought rises up in Will’s mind unbidden. The lingering looks, Fredrick’s embarrassment, his obsession about physical space, his reaction when Will had first been introduced to him, perhaps his fascination had concerned more than just Will’s unique talents. 

Fredrick Chilton has a crush on me, replaces Will’s earlier thought. It makes far too much sense. 

Fredrick is still looking at him, expecting an answer to his question. The concerned look is steadily growing. 

‘Fine, I’d better be getting back to bed’, Will mutters. He wants to get away from Fredrick as quickly as possible so he can sort out his buzzing thoughts. 

He knows he should stay with Fredrick, try to calm him and talk about what has transpired with Hannibal, but he can’t right now. It’s uncomfortable to admit it but Will is scared. 

Scared of Fredrick Chilton of all things. 

‘Okay, night then’, Fredrick replies, he looks disappointed but doesn‘t say anything of it. 

Will goes and crawls back onto his mattress feeling like the biggest coward in the universe  
\-----

Will lay on his mattress in the dark and tried to sort out his problems in an orderly manner. 

The number one issue was catching a psychopathic murdering cannibal. He was very little closer to actually doing so. 

Issue number two, he has a known fugitive hiding in his house with him after his attempted framing by previously mentioned murdering cannibal.

Issue three, the known fugitive has a crush on him. 

Will covers his face with his hands, he knew he should never have agreed to go back into the field. 

The first two problems being pretty much unsolvable at this point, Will decides to focus in on the third one. He could confront Fredrick about his ‘crush’ and have done with it, but that might make the entire issue hideously awkward. Will didn’t feel like going back to living with the old snarky pissed off Fredrick. 

The other option was ignoring it. Will preferred this route. Plus it wasn’t like Fredrick had tried to act on his feelings towards Will and maybe never would. Will didn’t feel like he could deal with sorting out the minefield of another persons intimate emotions, especially not Fredrick’s. The guy probably had a bucket load of problems just from his mother alone. 

It wasn’t like Will had a problem with gay men, he’d had a couple of trysts in his youth. Short and uninspired affairs, a couple of incidents of heavy petting behind piers. One embarrassing blowjob in a nightclub bathroom. Nothing to write home about, but Will had had his share of homosexual experiences. 

He’d dated women exclusively because they were usually more willing to put up with his quirks, at first.  
Fredrick Chilton was different from the women and few men he’d been involved with. Fredrick would not put up with his weirdness, the man was far too fastidious. The only reason he was putting up with Will was because he was forced to live in close quarters with him. As soon he got the all clear from the FBI Fredrick would be skipping back to his ugly house and never give Will a second glance. 

Will had to admit that Fredrick was, once he stopped being an ostentatious asshole, a fairly attractive guy. Dark hair and green eyes were a pretty beguiling mix, not that Will had given it much thought or anything. 

Fredrick probably had a crush on Will, literally because he was the only available man who didn’t think he was a murdering cannibal. 

It was like a bizarre offshoot of Stockholm syndrome. Nothing more. 

With that thought Will rolled over, pulling his pillow over his head as he did so. He resolved to not even think about it anymore. 

He had far more important things to deal with at the moment anyway. 

\-----

Peter bernardone had a cowed look him, Will couldn’t help but notice his hands shook from the moment he opened the door to him and Jack. 

It didn’t take an overabundance of empathy to draw the conclusion that Peter was guilty. The question Will needed to answer was determining what of. 

Although the notes his social worker had written about him stated that Peter was violent and maladjusted. Will knew without a doubt that Peter lacked any inclination to harm anything at all, let alone kill a series of women. 

He listened to Peter’s fractured sentences and read the hidden meaning between them. 

Help me, stop him hurting people, was the message he found. 

He couldn’t help but see something of himself in Peter, another version of him. A man who was crippled even more by his mental disorder, so that he couldn’t even function to level that Will could. Will could easily see himself as Peter, if his autism was slightly more severe. If fate had been slightly more cruel. 

On the drive back to Wolf-trap Will couldn’t but draw some comparisons between Peter and Fredrick as well. 

Although Fredrick would no doubt be mortally offended at the association between himself and a semi-functioning man who lived in a shed, Will couldn’t help but compare the two. 

Fredrick was lonely, lacked the ability to interact with people and had been framed for a murder he didn’t commit. 

Will wondered whether those reasons were why he’d pitied Fredrick as much as he pitied Peter, because he saw something of himself in them both. 

An animal instinct almost, the ability to scent the brokenness in another persons mind.

\----

Fredrick is sat on the porch, bundled up in one of Will’s old coats and a borrowed scarf. He looks chilly but nevertheless pleased at Will’s return. Will’s dogs are curled up around him, Winston has his head in Fredrick’s lap and Buster is sat on top of Winston with an air of frustration at being ousted. 

‘I made soup’, says Fredrick, putting down his book of crossword puzzles that he’d been frowning at when Will had pulled into the driveway.

‘Smells good’, Will says, thankful that Fredrick didn’t ask him how his day had been. He’s being honest, the homely smell of fried onions is wafting through one of the open windows. 

‘Give me a minute and I’ll serve it up’, Fredrick says, his eyes flicking over the dirt covering Will’s pants. Its clear Will has been back to the stables. 

‘Do you want me to lay the table’, Will asks, bending down to pet Trudy. 

‘It would be a help’, Fredrick says, gently lifting Winston’s head from his lap and shooing Buster as he tried to jump into the now unclaimed space. 

Will tries not the think about how domestic this all is and how he never would have imagined any of this to happen with Fredrick Chilton of all people. 

Dinner passes without much conversation, Fredrick has made Will chicken soup from scratch which Will finds pretty damn adorable despite himself. Fredrick just brushes off his thanks with a blush and reference to his mamita’s old recipe for recovering from sickness. Will can’t help but notice Fredrick is looking at his own vegetable soup a little more glumly than usual. 

He feels a stab of sympathy, he’s never really thought about how difficult it must be to wake up one morning and find you can never eat certain foods again. 

The chicken soup is fragrant and spicy, another Cuban recipe no doubt. It warms Will from the inside out and makes him feel more cheerful about life. 

To repay Fredrick he suggests they watch one of the DVD’s after dinner. Fredrick brightens up a little and starts on a spiel about the first time he watched Rent in New York city. Will just smiles and lets him jabber on, its nice to have someone else talking in his house, to share a meal rather than eat alone. 

Its actually nice to have Fredrick’s company. 

People at work have started to comment on how well Will is looking. Will has noticed that he no longer has as many nightmares, the bags under his eyes are lessening and he’s actually putting some weight on. 

Fredrick Chilton seems to have snuck into Will’s life and somehow changed it for the better. For the first time since he’d moved in, Will actually wonders what he’ll do when the time comes for Fredrick to leave.

Go back to eating ready meals in the dark probably. 

They sit together on the couch after the meal and watch Rent, Will has started to notice little things about Fredrick. The way he sits on the couch for instance, how he perches on the edge during tense moments and how his eyes light up like a child’s during the musical numbers. Fredrick keeps glancing at Will to measure his reactions, to see whether he’s enjoying the musical as much as Fredrick is.

Will can’t help but smile at him, he’s oddly endearing this snarky, pretentious little man. 

\----

‘The news said there is going be a leonid’s shower tonight’, Fredrick says, as the closing credits roll on the TV screen. 

‘A what?’, Will says, looking at Fredrick with raised eyebrows. He’d hadn’t imagined Fredrick was into astronomy, especially after the incident at the observatory. 

‘It’s a meteor shower’, Fredrick replies, a little of old haughtiness leaking into his tone, ‘Would you like to watch it?’, he sounds suddenly unsure towards the end of the sentence. 

‘Yeah sure’, Will replies, trying to think about how cute Fredrick looks when he smiles, when Fredrick giving him a grin in response. 

So that’s how they end up on his porch in the middle of the night, staring up at sky with a glass of whiskey in each of their hands.

‘That’s the second brightest star in this part of the sky in spring, Spica’ Fredrick says pointing to a dim star above them. Without the usual sting of arrogance in his tone, Fredrick isn’t a bad person to have a conversation with. He honestly seems to be too engrossed to in what he’s looking at right now, to care about making himself seem cleverer than he really is, ‘If you look carefully you can make out that its part of the constellation of Virgo, her sheaf of wheat, do you see it Will?’

Will nods, he can just about make it out. 

‘Virgo is according to Greek legend meant to represent the daughter of Ceres, goddess of the harvest, who is kidnapped by Hades and tricked into marrying him. That was their explanation of why the seasons change, its Ceres grieving when her daughter has to go back down to the underworld to return to her husband’, Fredrick continues, staring at the star with a look of reverence.

‘How long have you been into all of this’, Will asks, curious. 

‘By ‘all of this’, I assume you mean the known universe’, Fredrick counters in an amused voice, he tips his head back and looks out into the darkness, ‘Since I was a kid, I saved up all my pocket money to buy a second hand telescope and set up a tent on hill near my house. I’d spend a lot of nights up there during the summer holidays’. 

‘Do you still do that?’, Will asks, smiling at imagining Fredrick willingly going camping now. 

‘Not anymore, the city has bad air pollution so I wouldn’t see anything anyway’, murmurs Fredrick, a little sadly. 

‘Why not drive out to the country then?’, counters Will. 

‘I got so caught up with work, I just never had the time’, Fredrick replies, ‘When I wasn’t at the hospital, I was doing paperwork for the hospital. Plus I felt that I’d sort of outgrown it’. 

‘Out grown the known universe, that’s pretty damn arrogant even for you Fredrick’, Will says, his tone is jovial rather than mocking. 

Fredrick snorts in reply, ’Yes, I suppose it really is when you put it like that Will‘, he says. 

They sit in silence for a moment, their combined breaths causing a white mist to hang in the air in front of them. 

‘Are you ever lonely out here?’, asks Fredrick, tentatively. 

Will flicks his eyes over Chilton’s face, trying to find any trace of morbid curiosity. He didn’t want to be psycho-analysed by Fredrick, even if in a completely unpredicted way, he had become the closest thing Will had ever had to a friend. All he saw reflected back at him was sympathy and something else…

Understanding?

How could Fredrick Chilton possibly understand him?

Perhaps because he’s as lonely and isolated as you are, a little voice in the back of Will’s head murmured. 

Will took another sip of his drink and tipped his head back, taking in the cold brightness of the stars above him. The night air was like a soothing balm on his face, for the first time in a long time, Will Graham felt peaceful. 

‘Sometimes being lonely is better than other states of mind‘, he replied, ‘I don’t have to feel anything but my own emotions here. Outside the world is so loud, full of peoples pain and noise, it worms inside my head. I can’t control it. It’s like I’m a rock being smashed by the ocean, over and over, until I’m worn down and there’s nothing left of me. When I’m here, it’s a stream, quiet and calm. The world just gently washes over me and I can remember who I am.’

Fredrick is quiet for a moment, he looks out into the darkness of the forest before saying, ‘Do you feel that I’m trying to get inside your head?’.

Will looks at the other man, in the dim light he cannot make out much of Fredrick’s facial expression. 

‘Do you still try?’, Will asks. 

Fredrick swallows, ‘Not anymore’ he replies. 

‘Thank you’, Will says quietly. 

‘I used to envy you so badly’, Fredrick said, he turns toward Will an ironic smile on his face, ‘I’ve never really been able to connect with people you know. Only a precious few, my mamita, Colette, my nieces, a couple of friends at university‘, Fredrick lets out a shuddering breath, ‘I’ve had a lot of time to think Will. I didn’t deserve what you did for me after Hannibal framed me, I was an asshole to you from the moment I met you. I treated you like a prize chimp at a zoo, not a man. You should have called Jack, you had every right’. Fredrick leans forward in his chair and puts his head in hands, ‘You want to know the saddest thing, the time I’ve spent here is the most prolonged contact I’ve had with another human being for years. I’m such a joke it’s not even funny!’

Will doesn’t know whether it’s the alcohol pleasantly buzzing through his bloodstream, or the calm of the night, that makes him reach out and put his arm around Fredrick Chilton, but he does. They sit like this for a while, watching their breath form mist on the air. 

‘You know Fredrick’, Will says, breaking the silence, ‘you might be a lot of things but at least you aren’t as blind to reality as most of the people I know’

‘I’m the custodian of harsh truths, lovely’, mutters Fredrick, but he leans back into Will’s arm as he says this. 

‘I meant about Hannibal’, Will says, shivering a little as the image of his ‘therapist’ flashes through his mind. 

‘Hannibal the cannibal’, Fredrick says, chuckling dryly, ‘It’s not that impressive, in due course every newspaper in the world is going to berating the FBI for being so blind’

‘Trust an organization that believed a vegan could be the ripper’, replies Will, with a smirk. 

Fredrick lets out a bark of laughter, looking up at Will. His green eyes blazing with amusement. 

Will leans forward and kisses him. 

Chilton stiffens momentarily with shock, but then he moves into the kiss and deepens it. Will notes that Fredrick’s mouth tastes of malt whiskey and green apples, he likes the flavour. Chilton, thankfully no longer smells so strongly of aftershave, he’s having to ration it out now to make it last. Will can enjoy the scent of cloves and lilac rather than be smothered by it. It’s different to kissing Alana bloom, and any of Will’s previous girlfriends. Fredrick’s lips are not as soft, it’s a new feeling to stubble rubbing up against his cheek as he presses in for more contact. There are no breathy sighs of pleasure, instead Fredrick lets out a small but very masculine moan, as Will brings his hand up to cup the other mans face with his palm. 

Fredrick moves towards Will, gently entangling himself with the other mans body. He rubs his thumb along the back of Will’s neck, sending shivers down his spine. 

Then as suddenly as this has all started, Will stops mid-grope of Fredrick’s thigh and realizes he’s kissing another man. 

Fredrick Chilton to be exact.

He’s in the middle of making out with snarky, pretentious Dr. Chilton, who carries a silver cane and slated him in front of a crowded courtroom as a psychopath. 

What the hell. This was wrong on so many levels.

But Will really didn’t have the presence of mind to care. 

Fredrick is so responsive its ridiculous, he’s already blushing and panting from little petting and a few kisses. Confirmation to Will’s sneaking suspicion that Fredrick never got laid much in his old life. He’s looking up at Will with a mixture of lust and nerves, it looks as if the two conflicting emotions are fighting it out inside his head and lust is winning hands down. 

‘Will, do you want to keep going?’, he asks, sounding like he really really hopes Will says yes. One of his hands is still wrapped around the back of Will’s neck, stroking with his index finger in way that should not be as sinful as it feels. 

Will responds by kissing him again, this time tilting Fredrick’s head up and slipping his tongue into his mouth. 

Fredrick positively groans at sensation, making Will wonder what sounds he would make during other, even more pleasurable activities. 

Not to be outdone, Fredrick slides his hand down Will’s chest, unzipping his coat and gently stroking his fingers across Will’s stomach. 

The coldness of Fredrick’s fingers shock Will a little, but also lend to the arousal growing pleasantly inside him. 

‘We should go inside if you’re going to start undressing me Fredrick’, Will murmurs into Fredrick’s mouth, letting his own hand move from Fredrick’s thigh to brush over the other man’s clothed erection. 

Fredrick simply moans in response. 

Will can’t help but smirk at the ease in which he has reduced Fredrick to an incoherent mess. 

They end up stumbling back into the house, kissing as much possible, tipping over several pieces of furniture and a very confused Buster along the way. It’s a miracle they make it down onto the couch without breaking any bones. But when Fredrick skilfully undoes his belt without him noticing and grips Will’s cock in his warm palm, Will forgets all about it. 

For someone who was described as a woeful surgeon, Will has to concede that Fredrick is pretty damn good with his hands. He knows just how to hold him and rubs with the same gentle but insistent movement that Will would use on himself. 

Its Will’s turn to moan and bury his head into Fredrick’s shoulder at the sensations. He has the uncanny feeling that Fredrick is probably smirking at him, but he doesn’t give a damn right now. 

He can feel Fredrick’s erection poking into his hip and being the gentleman that Will Graham is, he decides to return the favour that Fredrick has offered him so willingly. He slides his hand under the waistband of Fredrick’s loose pants and cups his cock. Fredrick moans approvingly into his neck and speeds up his own strokes of Will’s erection.

Will closes his eyes, seeing stars flash the darkness. Fredrick is pressing desperate kisses along his neck, his stubble rubbing pleasurably against his own jaw. He’s also murmuring something under his breath in Spanish, that Will can’t quite hear but wouldn’t have the presence of mind to be able to translate anyway.

Fredrick is the first to finish, arching against Will’s body with a loud moan and coming into his hand. Rather than collapsing back against the couch, which Will would have predicted he would do, Fredrick pushes Will with gentle firmness until his back is leaning against the headboard. 

Will’s about to ask what Fredrick’s planning on doing but is cut off by Fredrick pulling Will’s pants down the rest of the way and engulfing Will’s cock into his mouth. 

It turns out that Fredrick Chilton also has a pretty talented mouth. 

Fredrick darts his tongue over the head of Will’s cock, applying just the right amount of pressure to have Will gripping the couch cushions with white knuckles. He looks utterly debauched from Will’s point view, salvia dripping down his chin and he enthusiastically takes another inch of Will’s cock down his throat. 

Will realizes that without a doubt Fredrick Chilton is enjoying sucking his cock. And it is with that thought that he cums, hard into Fredrick’s willing mouth.

Fredrick waits for Will to come down from his orgasm, languidly licking down the length of his softening dick one more time, before pulling away and spitting the cum in his mouth into an empty glass on the coffee table. 

‘Animal proteins Will’, he says almost apologetically. 

‘You’ve done that before’, Will says, still lying immobile on the couch with slowly dawning knowledge that he’d just been given the best blowjob of his life by one of his former psychiatrists. 

Fredrick just smirks in response, pulling his pants back up, and sliding next to Will on the couch, putting his head on the other man’s shoulder. 

‘Not for a long time’, he says, ‘But I’m guessing you enjoyed yourself’, he adds, a little smugly. 

‘I’m guessing you enjoyed yourself as well’, Will counters with a smirk of his own, wiping his cum covered hand over Fredrick’s pants, earning an indignant yelp from Fredrick in response. He leans over and presses a more chaste kiss to Fredrick’s mouth and this quietens him up. 

‘Can I sleep with you tonight?’, Fredrick asks, he looks uncertain now. 

Will pauses for a moment. He could say no and in the morning they could both pretend none of this had happened. It would be the more sensible option, given that neither of them could really probably commit to anything reassembling a normal relationship right now. But the way Fredrick is looking at him, with a mixture of fragile hope and something else that Will doesn’t have the courage to put a name too, makes him reach out and cup the other man’s cheek in his palm. 

‘Sure’, he says and the single word carries a much greater weight of meaning than it should. 

Will yawns, the events of the day and his orgasm have left him feeling pleasantly drowsy. He takes Fredrick’s hand and walks over to the bed on the other side of the room. 

Fredrick lies down next to him after a moment of hesitation and Will pulls the covers over both of them. He doesn’t want to think about how this is all going to work out in the morning. Right now all his wants to do is sleep. Fredrick curls up next to him, placing his arm tentatively over Will’s chest. 

‘Night Will’, he whispers, leaning in and pressing a kiss against Will’s cheek, which is strangely more intimate than anything else they’ve done tonight. 

‘Night’, replies Will, he can faintly see flashes of light in the sky through the window. They’ve missed the meteor shower, but he doesn’t care. All he cares about right now is drifting off into sleep in the warm comfort of Fredrick’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to check out my tumbler http://onefootinthegravex2.tumblr.com/, if you feel inclined to do so.


End file.
